An old security technology that has gotten little attention is finally ready for a new closeup.

It goes by the name polymorphic code — or alternatively, automated moving target defense or AMTD — and it has been around for nearly a decade. It came into its own around 2017 when was popularized by both malware writers and defenders.

And once again, security professionals are playing another cat-and-mouse game, but this time the stakes are a lot higher thanks to better tools on both sides.

On the malware side, the term describes code that can adapt to conditions and change its behavior to try to avoid detection. It cuts across a wide swath of computing circumstances, including the ability to attack runtime memory, file systems, credentials, virtual machines, workloads, containers and network connections.

You can learn more about this technology and both its uses for good and evil in this post for SiliconANGLE.