The U.S. Defense Department is funding work on new search engine-like software to detect attacks coming from inside a computer system.

This is the logical equivalent of a Google search on a computer network to find malicious user activity, said Kevin A. Kwiat, program manager at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Information Directorate in Rome, N.Y.

The technology will focus on detecting an 'insider' attack, Kwiat said in a statement, which is the most difficult to thwart because the user has already been granted the network privileges that an outsider does not have.

Kwiat works in the directorate's Information Grid Division.

Telcordia Technologies Inc. of Piscataway, N.J., received a $1.26 million contract to develop the new software.

The 18-month agreement is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of Arlington, Va.

The work will support the Self-Regenerative Systems program sponsored by DARPA's Information Processing Technology Office. SRS works to develop computer systems that are able to learn from attacks and repair themselves so they can continue to operate critical systems even after an attack.