HP points new weapons against virus, worm attacks

Saying it was inspired by the way the human body fights off disease, Hewlett-Packard plans to announce today that it has developed two new methods to help combat computer worms and viruses. Researchers at HP Labs developed the new services, called Active Countermeasures and Virus Throttler, and tested them on the company's vast computer network over the past year. The services will likely be included by year's end in the security packages HP offers big businesses, executives said. The services will provide some relief for corporate computer systems in an environment that is "on the brink of a crisis," said Joe Pato, a researcher with HP Labs in Palo Alto, Calif. "We as an industry are trying to become more adaptive, more responsive and create faster business processes," he said. "But at the same time, we have increasing attacks on the lifeblood of communications, the Internet." The company's announcement is timed to the kickoff of RSA, the annual computer and network-security conference that runs this week in San Francisco. About 10,000 people are expected to attend the show, which will focus, in part, on the computer worms and viruses that are attacking networks with increasing frequency. Pato describes HP's Active Countermeasures service as "fighting fire with fire." The service mimics a computer worm's ability to take advantage of vulnerabilities on certain machines, and aims to get to those machines first.