Smarter searching for a network packet database

Bioinformatics has developed some very sophisticated algorithms used for searching within the large amounts of data produced by sequencing projects. Introduced here is a method that leverages these algorithms for processing computer network data traffic to find and classify information in a way that avoids many of the operations that are required of more traditional methods of processing network data packets. It can be used to avoid processing the data through a protocol stack in order to extract the content to make it ready for searching as well as being able to a access the advanced search capabilities developed for biological data. Raw data (for example whole Ethernet packets or strings/ motifs) can be directly searched for within a database of structure signatures to indicate packets of interest via structures within the query packet. The structures referred to here are the “patterns of patterns” within the data. This paper describes the results obtained by creating a searchable database based on bioinformatics techniques and searching it using sample data.