immune system like virus protection

[Shrykull]

Heard this on TechTV I'm not sure of the details but someone is developing one that works like your immune system, recognizing what's normal and what's not. No need for new virus definitions.
I wonder if it's anything like an anti-virus program I thought of, is looks at the code for the program, knows what's supposed to be there, if it matches everything's fine, but if it finds code that isn't supposed to be there it prompts you to get rid of it, or you can set it to get rid of it. A problem with this is what if you add some new code that's supposed to be there that's just new, like a new sims expansion for example?

[Crayz9000]

Microsoft Word is going to drive that program nuts...

[TrailerParkJawa]

How would it know to stop something that is dangerous but allowed by default?

[Pu-239]

Haven't they had heuristic virus detection for a while now?

[Darth Wong]

Heard this on TechTV I'm not sure of the details but someone is developing one that works like your immune system, recognizing what's normal and what's not. No need for new virus definitions.

Your immune system rejects anything which is different from itself. A computer version of this system would reject anything that doesn't look like the code already on your computer. A stupid idea if you ask me, since that would reject pretty much anything not from Microsoft.

I wonder if it's anything like an anti-virus program I thought of, is looks at the code for the program, knows what's supposed to be there, if it matches everything's fine, but if it finds code that isn't supposed to be there it prompts you to get rid of it, or you can set it to get rid of it. A problem with this is what if you add some new code that's supposed to be there that's just new, like a new sims expansion for example?

There are many anti-virus programs which claim to be able to "heuristically" detect viruses. So far, their claims are all bullshit, they have an abysmal record of detecting new viruses with this nonsense, and I suspect this article on TechTV was just a repackaged commercial for one of those products. The line between news and advertising has been seriously blurred in recent years.

[TheFeniX]

Too bad if this even is true, then ignorant users would screw it up. I still get phone-calls from people who read a few e-mails and installed the free Zonealarm software and ask me "Do I want to allow In-ter-net Ex-plor-er (as they spell it out) to access the Internet?"

I'll stick with Norton.