Anti-hacker Box
A Korean research team has successfully developed new black boxes for computers that can record and store hackers' activities, after two and a half years of research and development, and with a US$1 million investment.
Kim Jong-man, former professor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, unveiled the Server Black Box at a press event in the Georgia Tech Hotel on Nov. 19 (local time).
Kim, who established Soteria Systems to develop products, and temporarily left the school this summer, got the idea from aircraft black boxes that record flight data.
He remarked, “The Server Black Box is the first module-type device fitted with hardware that records hackers' activities.”
The research team headed by Professor Kim is waiting for approval from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which is scheduled for early next year.
Similar to aircraft's black boxes, the newly-developed device is designed to prevent anyone to delete all the information of a company stored on a network server.
Kim explained, “As cyber attacks are getting more sophisticated and organized, hackers often eliminate all trace of their penetration into the computer system,” adding, “So, there are many cases where companies do not even recognize when and how their computers were hacked.”
He continued by saying, “However, if the Server Black Box and related software are installed in the system, users can be notified of hacker's penetration in real time.”
The former professor also stressed, “So far, hackers' routes of penetration and activity have been identified only with written documents in a cybercrime trial. But it is now possible to demonstrate them in an image by using the Server Black Box, since the device records and stores hackers' activities.”