BioSec 2012: Cheryl

Trying to tie Computer Security into all of this

Using Darwin’s approach

• Really slow: it took biology billions of years to get to the efficiency it now is at. How are we supposed to compete with that?
• If we follow the same process we are setting up for failure most of the time…species getting extinct because they failed most of the time
• Species survival is highly dependent on environment…computer security needs to basically work all the time independent of its environment …how is this going to work?

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So for things to work:

• there needs be a lot of redundant stuff:
  • Genes – redundant ways to get an amino acid
  • Genome – copies of the same genes
  • Pathways – many regulators
• diversity
  • Biology is so good because there aren’t two things that are really the same…they have a lot in common…but there is that one small aspect that sets them apart…if they were all the same then one small thing just wipes all of them out
  • Can this be done with computers…randomize things by adding introns (junk code)?

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