Infecto: Hyperreactive security in an operating system

By Courageous Project

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Summary:  Tired of having people attack and try and exploit your firewall or send viruses onto your network? Don’t like having to worry about security software that doesn’t always seem to cover the full range of your needs? You might consider, then, contributing to efforts to build Infecto, the world’s first iteration of Linux with reactive security. Each donation guarantees you an enterprise site license to use the operating system on non-public networks.

Markets: Global

Competitors: None

Target Market: Private business networks that would like a measure of control over the data that is stolen from them.

– Can not be remotely controlled
– Can not have memory hijacked
– Can not transfer files that are not .PDF from the machine outside the network without a virus attached
– Just like security software updates, if the virus becomes compromisable, it will be updated automatically.
– Option to set what level of reaction you would like if a file is stolen or removed from the network.


What is Hyperreactive Security?

Hyperreactive security is a pretty radical concept that was put together by Imaginot a couple of years ago. The idea is to present a strong offense as a means of providing a strong defense. Therefore the Infecto operating system is as it sounds, infected with a virus. The virus is benign to the host and any other machine that is running Infecto within the same defined network. We will provide more details on how spoofing can be avoided later. The base configuration is locked down so there can be no remote access or ports opened by third parties regardless of how they attempt it. Internet access is sandboxed and workers that use Infecto should be utilizing cloud application suites. E-mail attachments and other files cannot be transferred from the local drive to the cloud unless they are .PDF files. Users can cut and paste images and text from the local drive to the cloud. Any attempt to access or compromise the operating system will be dealt with normally by your company security software to keep the system clean. Any attempt that breaches your security software and makes any attempt to move any information off of your drive and onto a disk, usb stick, or to an outside machine over the network will end up moving an infected file. Once on an outside machine or other form of media, the virus will be activated and start trying to report it’s location. At the same time, it can be pre-set to do one of several things, with the most extreme action being eating the filesystem in its new environment.

Am I liable for Infectoing other people’s machines?

Infecto will ship so that it will be impossible for you to Infecto someone else’s machine accidentally if you do not break the license agreement terms. If you provide a donation, you will be given full documentation and an enterprise site license. If your files are stolen as files and the virus is activated on someone else’s machine, you will not be liable because you did not initiate any action that transferred the file to their machine.

So Zombies beware?

In a sense, however you control the reaction. You will be able to set different levels of reaction for different types of documents and files. If they therefore steal your weekly cafeteria menu, you may opt to just set the virus for that level of document to only destroy the file immediately. If they manage to make a copy, it will destroy itself and so on. Most zombies or bot-net machines don’t know that they have been compromised and so an additional feature of Infecto is to notify you of the breach and the location if they are on the internet. You can therefore attempt to find them and contact them if you desire before the file is destroyed if you choose the option to have the virus activate after a set amount of time.
If the machine is important enough to someone, it will be backed up anyway and you will be doing them a favor by alerting them to the fact that their machine is being used to transport stolen property, regardless of the reaction you select.

Is the world ready for Infecto?

Good question. Infecto has actually been on the drawing board for quite some time at Imaginot. It has only been recently, however that the US government was approached by a business consortium asking it to allow businesses the right to conduct sort of offensive strikes on those who attack their systems. The ultimate answer is to restructure how the internet is designed with regard to security. In both cases, while those two different ideas are batted around and discussed, there is a need for realtime security enhancements that can protect your intellectual property.

What about e-mail infections that send out to multiple parties?

Infecto users should be using web-based e-mail and that e-mail security will be handled in the cloud and not the operating system. You therefore will not have to worry about any infected files being sent externally via e-mail.

Is Infecto new from the ground up?

Infecto will be a Linux modification that follows an Android model of market deployment. The system will ship open-source with key modifications installable once an agreement has been signed. The latest virus will be available via a separate store and will be downloadable and configurable once a very low-cost contract has been signed as well.

Can I run normal applications?

Yes, you should be able to run anything that runs on Linux. If you use Microsoft productivity products, we suggest you use their cloud suite in the sandbox.

What are the suggested contributions?

As a reward for supporting development efforts, we pledge to ship an individual license for each $25 contributions, a small business license for $250, and an enterprise site license for $2000.



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