le of diverse cultures." 5.6 A NEW APPROACH TO VIRUS SCANNING A new technology, developed by a computer scientist at Washington Univer- sity in St. Louis, Missouri, aims to stop malicious software, including viruses and worms, long before it has a chance to reach home or office computers. John Lockwood, an assistant professor of computer science at Washington University, and the graduate students that work in his research laboratory have developed a hardware platform called the field-programmable port extender THE INTERNET RULES-IP TECHNOLOGIES (FPX). This system scans for malicious codes transmitted over a network and filters out unwanted data. The FPX is an open platform that augments a network with reprogram- mable hardware. It enables new data-processing hardware to be rapidly devel- oped, prototyped, and deployed over the Internet. "The FPX uses several patented technologies in order to scan for the signatures of 'malware' quickly," says Lockwood. "The FPX can scan each and every byte of every data packet transmitted through a network at a rate of 2.4 billion bits per second. In other words, the FPX could scan every word in the entire works of Shakespeare in about 1/60th of a second." Viruses spread when a computer user downloads unsafe software, opens a malicious attachment, or exchanges infected computer programs over a network. An Internet worm spreads over the network automatically when malicious software exploits one or more vulnerabilities in an operating system, a Web server, a database application, or an e-mail exchange system. Existing firewalls do little to protect against such attacks. Once a few systems are com- promised, they proceed to infect other machines, which in turn quickly spread throughout a network. Recent attacks by codes such as Nimba, Code Red, Slammer, SoBigF, and MSBlast have infected computers globally, clogged large computer networks, and degraded corporate productivity. Once an outbreak hits, it can take any- where from weeks to months to cleanse all of the computers located on