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Struggling to cope with a dramatic rise in malicious hacker intrusions, a group of 18 network providers and ISPs last week announced plans to share real-time data on cyber-attacks.
The vendors, which include Cisco Systems Inc., British Telecommunications plc., EarthLink Inc., MCI Inc. and XO Communications Inc., have formed the Fingerprint Sharing Alliance to automate the way information is distributed during an intense hacker attack.
At the hub of the alliance is Arbor Networks Inc.s Peakflow SP, a network security product capable of detecting, back-tracing and responding to anomalies such as denial-of-service and worm/virus attacks.
Farnam Jahanian, founder and chief scientist at Arbor, based in Lexington, Mass., said members of the alliance can collect data from devices around the network and look for anomalies. If the network deviations are flagged as malicious attacks, Peakflow SP generates a fingerprint that can be shared automatically and securely with select peers.
Recipients of the fingerprint have the option to accept or reject the sharing request when the incoming fingerprint is received. A typical fingerprint includes data on the scope and severity of a hacker attack.
Ryan Naraine is a senior writer for eWEEK.com.