A Crowdsourcing Approach to Protect Against Novel Malware Threats

Worm attacks for more than two decades have been affecting the Internet causing instability and economic loses. In a huge pool of possible victims such as the Internet there can exist many targets running the same software with the same vulnerabilities. To prevent such targets from getting infected one can use the crowd experience to identify a possible attack and restrict the use of possible vulnerable software for a certain period. Crowdsourcing intelligence or collaborative intelligence is the power of many when each one in a group of participants shares certain information. It is characterized by enhancing information accuracy which further improves decision making on the group. This paper presents and analyzes NetBuckler, a collaborative client application which employs collaborative intelligence to defend against Internet worms. It also briefly presents JXTA and its potential.