An Undetectable Computer Virus
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these results on computer virus detection in the real world is small. … For the purposes of this paper, a computer virus is a viral set; a program p is …
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An Undetectable Computer Virus
David M. Chess and Steve R. White
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Hawthorne, New York, USA
chess@us.ibm.com, srwhite@us.ibm.com
One of the few solid theoretical results in the study of computer viruses is Cohen’s 1987
demonstration that there is no algorithm that can perfectly detect all possible viruses [1]. This
brief paper adds to the bad news, by pointing out that there are computer viruses which no
algorithm can detect, even under a somewhat more liberal definition of detection. We also
comment on the senses of “detect” used in these results, and note that the immediate impact of
these results on computer virus detection in the real world is small.
Computer Viruses
Consider the set of programs which produce one or more programs as output. For any pair of
programs p and q, p eventually produces q if and only if p produces q either directly or through a
series of steps (the “eventually produces” relation is the transitive closure of the “produces”
relation.) A viral set is a maximal set of programs V such that for every pair of programs p and q
in…
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