A Distributed Approach against Computer Viruses Inspired by the Immune System

Abstract

SUMMARY More than forty thousands computer viruses have appeared so far since the first virus. Six computer viruses on average appear every day. Enormous expansion of the computer network opened a thread of explosive spread of computer viruses. In this paper, we propose a distributed approach against computer virus using the computer network that allows distributed and agent-based approach. Our system is composed of an similar to the biological immune system and similar to the recovery mechanism by cell division. The recognizes “non-self” (which includes computer viruses) using the “self” information. The uses agents similar to an antibody, a natural killer cell and a helper T-cell. uses a which sends an uninfected copy to infected computer on LAN, or receives from uninfected computer on LAN. We implemented a prototype with JAVA TM known as a multi-platform language. In experiments, we confirmed that the proposed system works against some of existing computer viruses that can infect programs for MS–DOS TM .