Generation 0: Virus is deployed, begins replication. Gen 1 thru N: 2 exact copies of 0, 2 that may or may not run. One with some small random chunk of memory added into it, the other with some small random chunk of memory replacing some part of it. Of the Gen1 species, the Gen0 clones will survive, the other two may or may not survive.
Eventually, some of the modified first generations will either add code that does not render them inoperable or modify code that does not render them inoperable. It's important Gen0 be as compact as possible for this to work well.
Some survivable Gen-N child might be: Faster/slower repro rate. Few or More Children of various types. Various inserted/appended bytes that do not cause immediate failure.
Some potential catastrophic events are over-consumption of resources, causing the eco-system (computer) to crash, people altering the environment (formatting the drive) and people writing virus elimination software. A strain might be super-successful in the short term, dominating the resources on the system it inhabits or distributing itself more virulently than other strains, but that will result in a greater likelihood for a catastrophic event so the system becomes self-limiting.
As changes and 'non-fatal additions' accumulate, some of those changes will eventually cause some of the non-fatal paths to be run instead of just sitting around doing nothing. Most of those will fail but a very tiny percentage will survive and continue to replicate, change, and grow.
Now I'm wondering if these even need to be a 'virus' per say. If you had thousands of computers running a very simple program that does what I suggested and those computers were connected to the internet and other devices, in time, they would (in theory) eventually find their way off their home systems. For the first very long time, you'd have to rigorously back up the systems and restore them if your children wiped themselves out, but sooner or later, you'd get some that would find a solid path.
The cool thing is that in a closed system, your virii would begin preying on one another in time due to limited resources and competition.
Madness! I wonder if it could really be that simple. :)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-21 11:17 pm (UTC)Generation 0: Virus is deployed, begins replication.
Gen 1 thru N: 2 exact copies of 0, 2 that may or may not run. One with some small random chunk of memory added into it, the other with some small random chunk of memory replacing some part of it. Of the Gen1 species, the Gen0 clones will survive, the other two may or may not survive.
Eventually, some of the modified first generations will either add code that does not render them inoperable or modify code that does not render them inoperable. It's important Gen0 be as compact as possible for this to work well.
Some survivable Gen-N child might be: Faster/slower repro rate. Few or More Children of various types. Various inserted/appended bytes that do not cause immediate failure.
Some potential catastrophic events are over-consumption of resources, causing the eco-system (computer) to crash, people altering the environment (formatting the drive) and people writing virus elimination software. A strain might be super-successful in the short term, dominating the resources on the system it inhabits or distributing itself more virulently than other strains, but that will result in a greater likelihood for a catastrophic event so the system becomes self-limiting.
As changes and 'non-fatal additions' accumulate, some of those changes will eventually cause some of the non-fatal paths to be run instead of just sitting around doing nothing. Most of those will fail but a very tiny percentage will survive and continue to replicate, change, and grow.
Now I'm wondering if these even need to be a 'virus' per say. If you had thousands of computers running a very simple program that does what I suggested and those computers were connected to the internet and other devices, in time, they would (in theory) eventually find their way off their home systems. For the first very long time, you'd have to rigorously back up the systems and restore them if your children wiped themselves out, but sooner or later, you'd get some that would find a solid path.
The cool thing is that in a closed system, your virii would begin preying on one another in time due to limited resources and competition.
Madness! I wonder if it could really be that simple. :)