Electromagnetic waves are used instead of a computer program to detect and diagnose a malicious software – even if it is hidden
To detect viruses and malware on computers, generally, sophisticated antivirus software needs to be installed. The antivirus has a database of malicious codes which it uses for comparison with any other computer program running a similar code. Upon analysing and detecting any suspicious behaviour, the antivirus software performs the necessary step of diagnosing the error.
Much like how medical doctors use their knowledge of symptoms to diagnose a particular disease.Â
Now here’s a piece of exciting news. A research team at the Research Institute of Computer Science and Random Systems (IRISA), France has developed a new technique to detect viruses and malware by combining a Raspberry Pi, an H-field probe and an oscilloscope. The devised system doesn’t require any additional software installation and works by detecting the electromagnetic waves generated by existing software running on a computer.
Each software is known to generate a unique wave pattern. The H-field probe captures the wave pattern of the virus-infected software and displayed it on an oscilloscope. The program present in the Raspberry Pi then analyses the wave pattern and identifies the amount of risk and the virus type.
Upon repeated tests, the result turned out to be 99.82% accurate in detecting malicious software.
In this age of increasing digital technology, thanks to great strides made by IoT, such a protection method helps detect virus programs that sometimes manage to escape the clutches of antivirus software.
The system was built for research purposes, and as of now, there is no intention to release it commercially. Teams involved in securing systems from attacks will benefit from this newly devised technique.
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