In a recent counter-hacker test at the Advanced Information Systems Laboratory, Sandia Labs, AltiVec equipped Apple G4s running Yellow Dog Linux were part of "Intelligent agents challenge computer intruders,"by Neal Singer. Complete article at www.sandia.gov/media/NewsRel/NR2000/agent.htm

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- In the movie "The Matrix," malevolent but intelligent security agents -- personifications of computer programs able to learn -- defend an evil worldwide web. Now an intelligent software agent wearing a white hat and able to defend itself alone and in groups on today's Worldwide Web has been created at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories.

"If every node on the Internet was run by one of these agents, the I-Love-You virus would not have got beyond the first machine," says Steve Goldsmith, lead scientist on the project. In March, a coalition of these Sandia cyberagents successfully protected five network-linked computers over two full working days of concentrated attack by a four-person hacker force called the Red Team -- an expert hacker group, also at Sandia, whose purpose is to test the defenses of government and corporate computer systems.

"We're less concerned with the teen-aged kid and more with the serious agents from foreign governments or foreign corporations who may take a long time, very gently probing to understand where computers are that they can take over or compromise," says Goldsmith. "On command, they can be made to act as a supercomputer to attack a target, as happened recently, or crack a privacy code intended to protect financial, medical, or other critical data."

The cyberagent, still in the laboratory stage, actually functions as a multiagent collective -- a distributed program that runs on multiple computers in a network. These could range from artists' collectives to international corporate computer systems, and from neighborhood shopping groups to an armada of computer-coordinated Abrams tanks.

Says Ray Parks, leader of the Sandia Red team, "The biggest problem in the computer world is that new stuff is coming along that you don't even know exists. Your software doesn't recognize it. Current defenses work as virus checkers; they recognize only specific virus patterns. But this software will recognize odd attacks. It will turn off services, close ports, go to alternate means of communication, and tighten firewalls."

"Never send a human to do a machine's job: the cyberagent is a program acting under its own recognizance, and not under the direct control of an operator," says researcher Laurence Phillips, a member of the group. "Humans aren't fast enough. A person sitting at a terminal cannot protect you from Internet attack that is coming from everywhere in large masses of data."

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