Since Glenn Reynolds commented on DARPA’s CRASH and PROCEED programs:
Well, my only thought is that if you have cyber-security that’s modeled on the human immune system, the result will be a generation of hackers expert in overcoming the human immune system. I can see longer-term problems with that . . . .
CRASH’s immune system motivation is really just a metaphor. It really has nothing to do with the human immune system so you don’t need to worry about that. The most important thing about CRASH is they are pushing for “clean-slate” operating systems work, which means starting over rather than trying to make incremental improvements to existing faulty operating systems.
PROCEED would be a bigger deal, if someone can figure out how to make fully homomorphic encryption practical. So far, no one has any idea how to do that. (There’s a somewhat layman-friendly explanation of what fully homomorphic encryption is about here.)
Internet Scofflaw 