Free Application from U.S. Army Helps Unearth Malware
There is a new downloadable malware-detection tool in town. And it’s free.
BotHunter, sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Office and developed by research and technology organization SRI International, helps to discover bots, malicious programs that aim to make fraudulent use of computers. The tool was released last week.
BotHunter is described as “a passive network monitoring tool designed to recognize the communication patterns of malware-infected computers within your network perimeter.” What sets it apart from other devices is it looks for malware activity in both incoming and outgoing data.
BotHunter seems to be a success already. As of Sunday, BotHunter had some 40,000 downloads, says Phillip Porras, its lead developer and program director of SRI International.
“BotHunter has been a big hit,” Porras says. “The feedback is positive. People are hungry for tools that are good at looking for malware.”
In development for about a year, the tool works for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Live-CD and Windows XP.
As to its future, Porras says they are thinking about extending BotHunter to cover more Microsoft platforms, as well as are working with vendors to make high-speed versions of the tool. What BotHunter won’t do is clean up a machine if a bug is found.
Keeping data secure is of course an important issue for the collection industry. Check out this forum for more info about initiatives vendors are taking to keep data secure.
BotHunter, sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Office and developed by research and technology organization SRI International, helps to discover bots, malicious programs that aim to make fraudulent use of computers. The tool was released last week.
BotHunter is described as “a passive network monitoring tool designed to recognize the communication patterns of malware-infected computers within your network perimeter.” What sets it apart from other devices is it looks for malware activity in both incoming and outgoing data.
BotHunter seems to be a success already. As of Sunday, BotHunter had some 40,000 downloads, says Phillip Porras, its lead developer and program director of SRI International.
“BotHunter has been a big hit,” Porras says. “The feedback is positive. People are hungry for tools that are good at looking for malware.”
In development for about a year, the tool works for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Live-CD and Windows XP.
As to its future, Porras says they are thinking about extending BotHunter to cover more Microsoft platforms, as well as are working with vendors to make high-speed versions of the tool. What BotHunter won’t do is clean up a machine if a bug is found.
Keeping data secure is of course an important issue for the collection industry. Check out this forum for more info about initiatives vendors are taking to keep data secure.
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