SAN MATEO (12/06/97) - IBM researchers, tying themselves closer to the market, will show off next week at Internet World in New York a new way to rapidly track and attack viruses, as well as software to place hotlinks on objects in video.

The anti-virus software was developed to combat the increasingly rapid spread of viruses via e-mail and the Internet. The video-linking technology was designed to add interactivity to video, previously limited to text and graphics.

The anti-virus software can find viruses, send them off to an IBM lab to be studied, and have fixes back within minutes, said Steve White, senior manager of the immune system project. The program came about as researchers saw the type of viruses change and the speed at which they spread increase.

"It used to be that you got updates to your anti-virus software once a month," White said. "That's not enough now."

"If viruses can move around the world in minutes or hours, you are always behind trying to catch them and fix them," White added. "If that were to happen, then the Net would become a very unsafe place to conduct business."

The software is designed to monitor a computer for viruses or virus-like activity. Using neural Net technology, it evaluates macros to determine if they are harmful or not. It sends documents and infected files to a system administrator who can delete confidential material before forwarding the file to IBM. There the virus is automatically studied and identified, and a cure is found and returned to the infected site. White said this happens within minutes and without further human intervention.

The software is an extension to existing IBM anti-virus software and should be available next year, White added.

Hot Video, IBM's new technology to place hotlinks in video will enable businesses to make their story more compelling, according to Jeane Chen, its developer and IBM's manager of interactive media solutions. Formerly limited to text and graphics, Hot Video can now go into advertising, movies, or any other video, Chen said.

"This is not limited to the Internet," Chen explained. "It runs on top of existing video standards and adds little to it. You can run on CD, DVD [digital video disk], MPEG, whatever you want."

Because the technology runs on top of existing formats, existing material can be easily reused.

"Existing video can be repurposed for other needs without any recoding," Chen said.

"Videos become much more interactive, and text can be triggered," said Scott Woelfel, vice president and editor-in-chief at Cable News Networks' Interactive Web site, which has has been evaluating the Hot Video software.