Titan's quiet war

By Emma Lacey-Bordeaux, CNN

(CNN) – In the world of computer viruses and cybercrime the bad guys are winning. That's the bottom line of a new study which found some 90 million unique strands of malware attacking phones, computers, and networks.

Chris Smoak is trying to fight back.

[1:25] Five ten years ago it was like let's build a big wall like we used to do with castles in they day and let's make sure no one comes over the wall, under that wall or through the doors in the wall, well we can't really do that anymore.

Smoak heads up the Titan Project at Georgia Tech Research Institute. The project is housed in a small office, filled with computers and a white board with indecipherable scribblings.

It's there that a handful of Georgia Tech students and staff collect data and viruses from companies and government agencies. They analyze the code and figure out how to beat it.  Having that combined intelligence is essential according to Smoak.

[2:03]The bad guys can just can really have a field day with us if one company is attacked and they use the exact same mechanisms to another company, if those two organizations aren't talking or don't have a way to share that information, we are no better as a collective.

The Titan Project is currently in its beta stage but already they are sorting through 100,000 strands of malware a day.  It's a small dent but one that Smoak hopes might ultimately change the malware calculus.

 [3: 23] If we make it more difficult for them the hope is that eventually it will just become too difficult or too much of a pain and they can go do something else. It's not really solving the problem but it can at least help dissuade some people from doing it.

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