Welcome to The Red Queens Wiki Page

Introduction

Project Statement

Our research will look at the constant adaptations of viruses and virus prevention programs and whether or not there is a relation to the Red Queen hypothesis. We predict that the Red Queen hypothesis, the idea of natural selection can be seen in the interaction among viruses and computers. We propose that the constant advancement of virus protection software provides opportunity for more advanced viruses to be created.

Viruses

A Brief Definition

A computer virus can be defined as a computer program that can copy itself and is designed to infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus)

A virus can only be moved from one computer to another via being sent over a network such as the internet or by being carried by a removable medium (ie: a floppy disk, CD, USB drive, etc…) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer _virus)

Unlike computer worms or Trojan horses a virus needs to be transferred as part of a host.

Because of the popularity of the world wide web, the spread of viruses has become inherently more popular. This can be seen with the prevalence of virus protection programs enabled in an attempt to constantly deal with the creation of new and more effective computer viruses

In terms of the Red Queen Hypothesis, the term virus originates from biology. “A computer virus reproduces by making (possibly modified) copies of itself in the computer's memory, storage, or over a network. This is similar to the way a biological virus works.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus)

How They Work

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sxal31zIKdE

Brief Definition of Anti-viruses

The primary purpose of antivirus software is to detect viruses and potential threats to a computer and may perform different tasks, preferred by the user, to eliminate it. These softwares include a virus dictionary, which contain listings of known virus signatures. As the software is run on the computer, either automatically or manually chosen by the user, it sifts through the computer’s files and refers to these listings to find potential threats. Once found and alerted to the user, the viruses can be quarantined, which means to prevent the virus from spreading throughout the system. The software can also attempt to delete the virus and not the harmless files or program itself that it is attached to. Or in another case, the infected file can be completely deleted.

New viruses are constantly being produced encrypted with modifications that change their virus signatures and thus become unmatchable to the signatures in the dictionary. To keep up with the new viruses that are constantly being produced, the virus dictionary needs to be frequently updated and therefore new versions of the software needs to be downloaded, purchased, or upgraded by the user for maximum security. The dictionary expands through users who send their files they believe contain a virus problem to the software company for them to include.

Another popular way antivirus softwares try to catch up to the new viruses are through detecting any files that have suspicious behaviour. A suspicious behaviour may include a picture file trying to access the internet. This type of protection can detect a virus before it affects your computer. This competition for dominance involving viruses and antiviruses can be noticeably related to the Red Queen Hypothesis.

Explantion of the Red Queen Hypothesis

The Red Queen Hypothesis has the following features:

A "Parasite" that attacks a host at a specific point.
A one-to-one matching of codes between host and parasite (metabolic codes, genetic codes, computer codes)
Build up of an "arms race" as a change in host code initiates a corresponding change in parasite codes.

What is it?

based on two similar ideas
co-evolution
evolutionary extinction of one species, either the prey or the host, can result in the extinction of the other species, the predator or the parasite
The other idea has to do with sexual reproduction– it has to do with only certain genes being passed down which in turn reduces the possibilities of the infection being passed on to the offspring

Who was it founded by?

Van Valen – "Species had to run in order to stay in the same place."

When was it found?

1973

Where does this idea come from?

It comes from this book called “Looking through the Glass”, seems like a fantasy book where the protagonist named Alice goes into some sort of dream world and finds chess pieces that are alive.
Everything in this world is backwards so if you want to move forward you would actually have to move backwards and rapid movement causes abrupt stops.
So, I guess Alice wants to escape this place and so was told by a talking rose to find the “Red Queen”.
After Alice finds the Red Queen, they decide to run and they ran for a while but ended up in the same place and that’s where the theory made by Van Valen comes from…
The Red Queen says, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place”.
And so it may be with the coevolution, evolutionary change may be required to stay in the same place, and cessation of change may result in extinction

Now, how does this biological concept relate to computers and viruses

Viruses act like the parasite in computers which is the host.
As stated in the theory, both computers and viruses have to co-evolve, as in live together in order for both to survive.
Knowing this we can never really get rid of viruses simply because if we were to get rid of those we would in theory have to get rid of computers.
Taking the other possibility of this theory into account: people who make computers and viruses only take the traits that were successful the first time and add more attributes to it to get a more resistant computer software or a more harmful virus.

Solutions

Social security: Would it be better to create a tolerant system (like humans) rather than trying to constantly create an antivirus program that tries to isolate a system for a single infection. Eventually the system will become too fragile to deal with ay virus attacks and may crash as soon as a virus id able to break through the antivirus system. If we treat a computer system more like a biological entity, one that is able to function under certain levels of infection, we will be better able to deal with viruses as they constantly are adapting.

immunization - slowly introduce small parts of a virus so that the computer becomes somewhat resistant

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zcEn7p6CKfE

redundancy - multiple backups so if one site gets infectected it can be discarded.
disconnect parts to save the system as a whole. Not resistant but contains the virus to the infected area.