New Algorithm That Pinpoints Source of Cyber attacks

Swedish scientists have formulated a algorithm that can be utilized to locate spammers in addition to the source of a computer virus or malware.  The algorithm detects the root source by merely checking a small-scale percentage of the connections in a network, said Pedro Pinto, postdoctoral researcher at the Audiovisual Communications lab of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) on Monday.

The location of the source is essentially achieved by utilising the network structure, looking at who’s connected to whom, in addition to checking the arrival time of the virus to the sensors, Pinto said.

The workings of the algorithm were elaborated in a paper entitled ‘Locating the source of diffusion in large-scale networks’ that was issued in the Physical Review Letters journal on Friday.

Although the formula could be utilized in many different industries, the first commercial concern in the algorithm has come from computer security companies, Pinto said. “Some companies emailed me after we published the paper last Friday,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to disclose the names of the companies.

This could be the breakthrough computer security companies have been waiting for.  This will allow them to have the upper hand on the new malware being used as weapons of war.