Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Computer, Heal Thyself - With ClearView
ClearView software is designed to work on multiple computers that are running the same software, as is often the case on large server farms. ClearView monitors the behavior of programs and establishes a set of rules or parameters of normal operation.
ClearView works without assistance from humans and without access to a program's underlying source code (an often proprietary set of instructions that defines how a piece of software will behave). Instead, the system monitors the behavior of a binary: the form the program takes in order to execute instructions on a computer's hardware.
Once it determines that a software intrusion has taken place, it identifies which operational rule the target program is violating. ClearView then applies a software patch focused on the particular problem and then tests to see if a solution has been effected.
Most impressively, it then applies that patch to all of the other instances of the software running on different machines, "inoculating" them against intrusion.
For seven of the attacking team's approaches, ClearView created patches that corrected the underlying errors. In all cases, it discarded corrections that had negative side effects. On average, ClearView came up with a successful patch within about five minutes of its first exposure to an attack.
"What this research is leading us to believe is that software isn't in itself inherently fragile and brittle because of errors," says Rinard. "It's fragile and brittle because people are afraid to let the software continue if they think there's something wrong with it." Some software engineering approaches, such as "failure-oblivious computing" or "acceptable computing," share this philosophy.
I was pretty sure that I had read about this idea a long time ago, and sure enough, the City Fathers from James Blish's excellent 1957 series Cities in Flight oversaw each others work and prevented error and damage. The City Fathers were a set of artificially intelligent computer systems that oversaw operations for an entire city that had used the spindizzy to seek work among the stars.
Suppose they had a breakdown?
If there were only a few of them, that would be a real danger; but there are more than a hundred, and they monitor and repair each other, so in fact it will never happen. Sanity and logic is their stock in trade.
From MIT.
When a potentially harmful vulnerability is discovered in a piece of software, it takes nearly a month on average for human engineers to come up with a fix and to push the fix out to affected systems, according to a report issued by security company Symantec in 2006. The researchers, who collaborated with a startup called Determina on the work, hope that the new software, called ClearView, will speed this process up, making software significantly more resilient against failure or attack.
To test the system, the researchers installed ClearView on a group of computers running Firefox and hired an independent team to attack the Web browser. The hostile team used 10 different attack methods, each of which involved injecting some malicious code into Firefox. ClearView successfully blocked all of the would-be attacks by detecting misbehavior and terminating the application before the attack could have its intended effect. The very first time ClearView encounters an exploit it closes the program and begins analyzing the binary, searching for a patch that could have stopped the error.
It's easy to think that because the City Fathers are dead, they're also stupid… Otherwise they would never be given the power they wield - and in some departments their power is absolute.
(Read more about the City Fathers from Cities in Flight.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 11/1/2009)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 2 )
Related News Stories - (" Artificial Intelligence ")
Hundreds Of Covid-Catching AI Tools - None Help
'Plagues had been known to slay too rapidly and universally to be checked by human treatment.' Katherine MacLean, 1950.
DARPA's Sarcasm Detector Totes Gets Your Drift
'TARS, what's your sarcasm setting?' '100 percent.' - from Interstellar.
SF Writers Predicted John Deere Autonomous Tractors
'The huge plow... seemed to shake itself - and began to move back southward.' - Otfrid von Hanstein, 1935.
DARPA Funding AI Fighter Pilots
'Cultured brains on a slab.' - Peter Watts, 1999.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Monarch Tractor - It's Electric, Autonomous and Smart
'Driver-optional' and follows gestures.
'Seabreeze' Apple And UCLA Project To Beat Depression
'It's illegal to hold back information during a psyche test,' the machine said peevishly.'
Hovermap By Emesent Autonomous Mapping Works Indoors - and Out
Perfect for exploring ancient artifacts on distant planets.
Sono Motor's Sion Sun-Powered Car
'...six square yards of sunpower screens on its low curved roof.'
LEONARDO Robot Has Legs And Thrusters, Can Skateboard, Slackline
'a walking balloon proceeded with long strides of its aluminum legs over a slant of steep upland.'
Xavier Robots On Patrol For 'Anti-Social Behavior'
'This was as close as a robot could get to a cop in uniform.'
Rotating House in Bosnia
'... feel free to turn the house on your own.'
Ingenious Engineer Creates DIY Feeding Robot
'Waldo flexed and extended his fingers gently; the two pairs of waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism.'
SpaceX Creates 'Tholian Web' Mega Constellation Of Satellites
'We shall not see home again!'
Do Smart Glasses Need Forward-Facing Cameras?
'They were stylish, with yellow-tinted lenses and hip frames, but the posts were unusually thick.'
Adorable One-Seater Electric Car From Wuxi Sinotech
'Noiselessly, on rubber-tired wheels, they journeyed...'
Zoom Adds Real-Time, Live Translation
'He immediately turned the small shining disc of the Language Rectifier..'
It's Spacewalk Sunday, Thanks To The ESA
'The delicious, indescribable pleasure of being a little planet swinging through space...'
Pengxing Intelligent Robot Horse You Can Ride
'The horse reared up, pawing the air, then sprang into a gallop.'
Tesla Bot Humanoid 'Robot' Vs. Boston Dynamics Atlas Parkour Robot
'...most jobs that require a human form are better done by those organic alternatives.'
Altos Labs' Bezos Wants An Anti-Agathic (To Live Forever)
'So what we're looking for now is... an anti-agathic, an anti-death drug.'
