Computer researchers University of Cambridge in the UK have developed a new defense tactic against hacking attacks by implementing suicide instructions in computer networks under attack.
The approach works by giving all the devices on a network or "nodes" - the ability to destroy themselves, taking any nearby malevolent device with them. Self-sacrifice provides a check against malicious nodes attacking legitimate ones.
The technique, called "suicide revocation," lets a single node decide quickly whether another node's behavior is malevolent and shut it down. But there's a drastic cost involved in this procedure: the single node must deactivate itself too. It simply broadcasts an encrypted message declaring itself and the malevolent node dead.
It is a fact that distributed networks have no centralized control. Instead, organization of the network is distributed between individual devices, which can make the network both more efficient and more robust. This is not without its share of risks.
"Some devices may be compromised and made to transmit misleading data. Devices must be able to detect and respond to this misbehavior," says Ross Anderson, a colleague of Moore's. To protect such networks from intruders, Moore, Anderson and colleagues looked to find the most efficient and reliable way to remove misbehaving devices from ad-hoc networks.
