I ran across this article in The Register about how DARPA is looking for partners to develop methods to overcome common network filtering techniques, such as DNSBL and Content Heuristics.
Here’s my take on this:
In a military scenario, this probably makes sense. The opposing entity will try to block communications in various ways to disturb intelligence gathering and dissident activity. The ability to overcome these types of filtering techniques is therefore valuable. The problem is that this is obviously a two-edged sword. The same technology can make your own communications vulnerable to all sorts of problems such as Denial of Service attacks, Spam, Viruses and other malware.
This is kind of like developing a super Bubonic Plague virus. It is a formidable weapon in your own hands, but extremely likely to fall into the wrong hands, and cause you terrible damage.
If, on the other hand, disabling techniques can be developed along with the enabling techniques, we might come out with new filtering methods to better fight the spammer and virus writer.
In the article is a link to DARPA’s project paperwork.
What do you think?