IBM researchers in Zurich, Switzerland, have developed novel worm-squashing software the company says it wants to turn into a product to help guard against computer-network attacks such as those that slowed Internet traffic earlier this month.

For the last few months, a PC loaded with the new software, code-named Billy Goat, has kept watch over IBM's corporate network from the company's large research lab outside Zurich. The system uses a unique approach to detecting malicious software by looking at traffic flowing to Internet addresses that aren't assigned to specific computers, trying to isolate computers on a network that attempt to infect others. IBM is also testing the system at Bluewin, the Internet service provider unit of Swisscom AG, the Swiss national telephone company.

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