A new cyber defense system being developed by the NSA could automatically launch counter-strikes against attackers who target the US.
According to whistle blower Edward Snowden and reported by Infosecurity, the MonsterMind project, still under development at the spy agency, features algorithms which would automatically scan vast chunks of metadata with the aim of picking out malicious traffic.
With that intelligence the NSA system could then neutralize the threat and even theoretically launch a retaliatory strike autonomously. However, such a capability could end up targeting the innocent compromised computers being used by an attacker as a botnet to launch the initial threat, the whistleblower cautioned.
