by Mark K Hall

Created on: April 01, 2009

Before we start on this matter there is a very important piece of info we need to understand. There is a difference between a Malicious code and LLF (Logical Life Forms)

Malicious Code or Mal-ware is a chunk of code which is written to destroy or infect a system. They are lines of code which can only run when certain conditions are met, if not or if a firewall or anti virus is active on the "victim" system it will not be able to get through. A good anti virus system that is easy on your system memory and hard drive space, is AVG. AVG is free and constantly updated. You can get it at http://free.avg.com. While we are on the subject; you should probably get Spybot Search adn Destroy which will get rid of spyware from your computer and Adaware which will get rid of Adware as well. You can get them from http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html and http://www.lavasoft.com/ respectively. I highly recommend these three programs as well as turning on Windows Firewall if you haven't already and Automatic Updates.

Logical Life Forms(LLFs) are chunks of code that has the ability to evolve and a sort of "sense of survival" when it comes across a security code or firewall. If found in this situation, it will change its own code during execution and use this new piece of information to distribute itself through the security feature and into the network.

LLFs could be a god-send if used wisely or a catastrophe if it got into wrong hands. They could be written as a gate keeper to keep viruses and worms out of system or they could be written to create computer bots to search info from the multiple servers or enter restricted systems and features. As they are some what intelligent, (a simple archaic form of AI (Artificial Intelligence)), they are very helpful with respect to other codes that are out there. When used as a sort of gatekeeper and encountered by a malicious code, it could evolve itself in order to stop the Mal-ware from advancing. It could even change in order to destroy the Mal-ware if it were advanced enough. On the flip side a virus so strong that nothing could stop it could be developed that could evolve to circumvent and detection system out there and gain access to the most sensitive information on the planet.

You have heard of the worms that get distributed ratehr quickly throughout the world and cause enormous damage to business and personal computers everywhere. If a virus was constructed from a Logical Life Form code it could cause huge complications that may set people back months, even years.

Now you know the difference between LFFs and Mal-ware, you will be better equipped to defend against it.

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