Re: So I have this crazy idea about an 'anti-virus virus'

WARNING: I'm not that versed in Biology, but I have a basic understanding of the way viruses and the human body interact. So this won't use the correct medical terms. Sorry :) Also, I use the word virus out of lazyness, because I don't want to write (worm|trojan|virus|etc).

Just like E-Bitch I have an hour+ drive to work, and I also think about computer behavior and patterns in relation to human behavior and patterns. I think that most of E-Bitch's idea's makes sense.

My only issue with his description of human viruses is this:
When I get sick, I dont need to run my virus scanner to get better (thank god).
Doesn't the human "virus scanner" get better? Doesn't it adapt to new viruses and not allow the viruses to re-infect the body? (Not perfectly, but the capability is there, eg. Chicken Pox 'should' only infect you once.)

If I'm way off with this, then I'll apologize in advance, but If I'm not, I think that this is a way to improve on E-Bitch's ideas.

If we started the anti-virus virus with our current knowledge of virus definitions(like the MMR shots children are given), as a starting base. Then the virus can look for infectious behavior on the host system which indicates a hostile virus. Our 'good' virus replaces the hostile virus with a copy of the good virus. This would halt any damage due to the hostile virus. System performance would be impacted(like a human body feels tired, achy, sniffly(is that a word?) and other side effects of a high white blood count). The sys admin or user would then need to kill off the extra copies of the 'good' virus until the system returned to the normal state(Chicken soup, rest and fluids in humans.)

The above process works very much like the human body, which also leads to the problems that human bodies have.

The common cold is a virus, but humans still catch one many, many times, why? The common cold is actually a large amount of viruses, so that even though the human body will probably never get the same virus twice, it can catch each different varity. The same applies to our 'good' virus. It would need to be infected with each differnet virus to defend against it, unless it were smart enough to try and stop similar viruses(see below).

To see another issue we must look at the AIDS virus. There are problems with current treatments for the AIDS virus due to the virus becoming immune to the drugs used in the treatment. Imagine a computer virus that could activly detect our 'good' virus and when discovered would spawn a copy of itself that was modified so that the 'good' virus wouldn't properly identify the hostile virus. Another posibility is a virus that hid in files on the host system, causing our 'good' virus to overwrite infected files. As the hostile virus infected more files to avoid our 'good' virus, our good virus would eventually overwrite every file it could(all files it had permission to write to).

If our 'good' virus were smart, then we could avoid many of the drawbacks mentioned above. The smarter our virus would get the larger and more resource intensive it would become, which may be more harm then more traditional methods of dealing with viruses. Since we want the our virus to be able to automatically update its own virus definitions, then it would probably already be somewhat smart(already large and system intensive). Also if our 'good' virus was this smart, then what's to stop someone from reverse engineering our virus and turning it hostile?

I think that this idea is possible, but that it would need to be very, very, VERY well planned. If the negative aspects were overcome, then the positive aspects would work very well, but if the negative aspects were not delt with, then I can see this being more harm then good.

UPDATE: So I was wrong, please see dragonchild's response to this. If I have time tonight after work, I will try to update this to reflect the correct info.

--xPhase

Comment on Re: So I have this crazy idea about an 'anti-virus virus'

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Antibodies and human-computer analogies by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Aug 03, 2001 at 22:16 UTC
Your understanding of biology is somewhat flawed. The reason why humans should only get chicken pox once is that the human body creates antibodies specifically designed to deal with that version of chicken pox. That's why the smallpox vaccine (using a deactivated version of cowpox) worked, because the antibodies created to defend against cowpox also worked against smallpox. Using that paradigm, we should create an antibody for every single virus out there. Or, rather, there should be a "factory", similar to the lymph nodes (I think that's what does this), that would create the antibodies as each virus is encountered. Now, the problem with HIV is that its target (every virus has one or more target(s) within the body) is the very factory that creates antibodies, which is why so very few people develop an immunity to HIV. (I've heard of two, both well-documented.) The trick here is that there isn't one monolithic antibody in the human body. There's one for each genetic virus. (Or is it that there's one for every viral action? I dunno.) I guess the trick would be is to create an antibody that would prevent buffer-overflows, for example. Then, every virus that uses that as its entry method would be stymied. (And, no, I have no idea how that would be done, but it's a possible method.) This would mean that each antibody would be very resource-light, because it only does one thing, and does it well. (Haven't we heard that before, somwhere?) ------ /me wants to be the brightest bulb in the chandelier!	[reply]
Re: Antibodies and human-computer analogies by dondelelcaro (Monk) on Aug 04, 2001 at 00:45 UTC
Sorry, getting nitpicky here (and well off the topic, but I thought I'd clear up some common misconceptions). human body creates antibodies specifically designed The antibodies are not specifically designed. They are selected because they do not react with self proteins and happen to bind to some "acceptable" surface to activate themselves. (Usually a protein on a bacteria, possibly a viral fragment.) These antibodies are generated totally at random (well, sort of at random, I'm not going to go into exactly how they are made.) very factory that creates antibodies, which is why so very few people develop an immunity to HIV. (I've heard of two, both well-documented.) People who are immune to HIV have a T-cell mutation that causes them to be missing the CD4R (IIRC). This keeps HIV from being able to bind to the T Cells. {One of the people who guest lectures on HIV at UCR is immune to HIV. She found this out because her blood would not support viable HIV in culture. (It's hard to get fresh blood in the lab without vampiring your labies.)} There's one for each genetic virus. (Or is it that there's one for every viral action? I dunno.) There actually are thousands of antibodies for each virus (maybe millions) because the antibodies do not have a specific fit with the virus. Instead, they fit (I'll ignore the physics and chemistry necessary to understand the concept of "fit") in varying degrees of wellnes. That is, there are some antibodies that totally suck at binding, some that are decent, and some that spend almost all of their time bound to the binding site... This is main problem with adapting a analog solution to a digital problem is that when you get off by a bit in the digital world, things tend not to work at all. However, in an analog world, you can get away with an awfull lot of slop, just because things still "work" even if they aren't spot on...	[reply]
Re: Antibodies and human-computer analogies by xphase_work (Pilgrim) on Aug 03, 2001 at 22:21 UTC
I appreciate your correcting my flawed understanding, and I think that based on your new information the idea may still be valid(perhaps even more so). Thanks, --xPhase	[reply]