The National Science Foundation has granted $750,000 to two universities to study how diversifying information systems and software could help fend off future cyberattacks, the agency said Tuesday. The study, proposed by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of New Mexico almost a year ago, will seek to identify commonalities in software that could be used as the basis for attacks. Such common vulnerabilities would point to a computer “monoculture”–a population so homogeneous that a single threat could destroy it. “We are looking at computers the way a physician would look at genetically related patients, each susceptible to the same disorder,” Mike Reiter, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science at Carnegie Mellon, said in a statement. “In a more diverse population, one member may fall victim to a pathogen or disorder while another might not have the same vulnerability.” Full Story