Quarantine Net: design and application

Lately the world has seen an alarming increase in both the amount of new computer viruses and worms, as well as the speed at which they spread. Dealing with such outbreaks puts a heavy burden on end-users as well as operators of (enterprise) networks. In this paper we present an overview of, as well as operational experiences with Quarantine Net (QNET), a system that has been developed at the University of Twente. The goal of QNET is to limit the impact of computer viruses and worms outbreaks by quarantining infected systems in an automatic way. QNET not only reduces the speed at which viruses and worms spread, but also helps infected users to clean their systems and restore connectivity in a fast and easy way. Deployment at the University of Twente’s network has shown that QNET is an effective system to deal with outbreaks of computer viruses and worms, and sometimes achieves earlier results than popular antivirus tools.