Active Cyber Defense by Benevolent Worms

Worms has been known for their negative stigma, in the realm of cyber security. To fight against knives, we need at least knives. Similarity to counteract the worms, we can use worms. Hence, the capabilities of securing a network with benevolent worms is not ignorable. A good characteristic of worms that is helpful in cyber security is worms can replicate itself over the network. Just like malicious worm can infect a network by propagation, the benevolent worms can also propagate through the network and clean the infected machines. In this paper, the beneficial uses of such worms are included, that covers process optimization by idle process tracking, mitigating security patch deficiencies, cleaning up infected network, internet censorship, monitoring, system maintenance, hardware optimization, and cryptography. The collective utility of benevolent worms makes it an ideal candidate tool for active cyber defense.