Unprecedented level of Virus Alerts

arpy writes "iTnews reports that according to Trend Micro (makers of PC-cillin), there was a record-breaking level of virus alerts in the first quarter of 2004. In Q1 2003, Trend issued 35 virus warnings. During the same period this year, it issued 232. According to the company's annual virus round-up and forecast (PDF), the number of alerts was pretty much steady for 2001-2003. Particularly noteworthy is that so many of the viruses are variants, not original. Trend's April 2 Weekly Virus Report reveals that of the "Top 10 most prevalent global malware", the top five are all variations of Worm_NETSKY. This would seem to confirm Virus creators are sharing more code."

Comments

Re:And it's not going to go away soon...

[dj245]

You base your conclusing on a broad sweeping assumption that "it can happen". This theory is flawed. Viruses and worms are combated on many fronts, using multiple strategies. Many college campuses do not allow attatchments of any kind any more, I've heard some companies do the same. Corporate and home firewalls filter out the really nasty stuff at the gateway, before it gets to your precious PCs. A whole lot of companies and K-12 schools still run Windows98 for petes sake; completely immune to the latest round of worms. I used to think they were old fashioned, but it makes a lot of sense now. Varius virus scanners scan e-mails and all downloaded files before they are run. Dell, HP, etc all preinstall this stuff. Sure, it expires after a while, but it nags so much that generally what happens is the clueless people get a relative who knows better to give them a copy of Avast or other free scanner.

I hate to sound like the virus companies PR guy, but we've covered the problem of exposed permanent internet connections (routers with NAT), campus and company security, (server-side stuff and e-mail attatchment limits), and PC protection (preinstalled virus protection with autoupdate for the really clueless people).

Blink of an eye? A Day? An Hour? Doubtful. People are wiser now. Maybe not average Bob, but Bob's ISP admin, and Bob's computer salesman, and Bob's router company.