June 28, 2016
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wants to be able to predict what form malware will morph to so it can plan how to block it when it becomes reality.
DHS has granted Charles River Analytics in Cambridge, Mass., $500,000 to develop the technology, known as Predictive Malware Defense (PMD).
Charles River will use machine learning and statistical models to predict attacks based on new malware as well as create defenses ahead of time. The models will look at features of families of malware and predict how they might evolve.
Once it’s developed, PMD will be turned over to admins in private and public organizations – particularly financial organizations – so they can anticipate attacks before they happen, DHS says.
The project is part of a program called Internet Measurement and Attack Modeling that is also trying to create more resilient systems and networks, measure and map networks and model Internet-borne attacks.