A system to combat worms and spam by embedding defense mechanisms in key parts of the Internet is being developed by University of North Carolina and Rensselaer Polytecg researchers.

An autonomous system run by an ISP would detect a threat within its network, stop receiving and forwarding messages from the infected computer. and inform its peer autonomous systems about the identity of the threat. All autonomous systems would then isolate the infected computer or computers, neutralizing their ability to spread the worm or spam messages.