Intruder alert for the cyber world

Sophisticated hackers are going to get in. The trick is to find them and disconnect them before they get what they came for.

November 25, 2013

Los Alamos’s latest network defense program can detect the computer-to-computer paths taken by network intruders as they search for sensitive or proprietary data.

A new strategy for stalking stealthy intruders inside busy computer networks

In a successful hack attack, the attacker manages to get through an organization’s password-protected firewall and arrives at a relatively unimportant computer on the inside. From there, the hacker must hop to other computers and servers on the network, from one to the next, in search of higher-level access credentials to other computers that store network security information or proprietary information worth stealing. All this hopping leaves a detectable signature—even if it amounts to a cyber needle in an enormous haystack of everyday network activity—and new Los Alamos software successfully scans for that needle.