New Viruses Hit 30-Month High

Mz6 writes "InformationWeek reports that Sophos has analysed and protected against 959 new viruses in May, this is the highest number of new viruses discovered in a single month since December 2001. From Sophos' own TopTen list they continue on to say that the 'Sasser and Netsky worms may have captured the headlines. ...May has seen a noticeable spike in cybercriminal activity, suggesting that even the arrest of Sven Jaschan ...has done nothing to curb the problem.'"

Comments

Security...

[case_igl]

This is why security at the operating system layer is so important. How many homes and businesses are broken in to every day worldwide? Tens of thousands, I am sure. Computer crime will escalate in the future, to the point that virus software will probably barely be able to keep up.

Laws aren't going to stop this kind of thing, we need better solutions for security that automatically adapt and defend the end user or system they are on.

Re:Security...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, are you going to be the first one in line to scream "Monopoly abuse!" when Microsoft bundles anti-virus software with Windows and puts MacAfee and Symantec out of business?

(Don't think it's possible? Remember FTP Software? TCP/IP stacks weren't at one point "part of the OS", either. They were a third-party addon. IE is an 89 Kbyte program; the rest is all "part of the OS". Popup calculators and notepads were third-party tools. So were disk defragmenters. There is no hard and fast line.)

Re:Security...

[pavon]

Security at every layer is important because none of them will every be perfect. For example, there is an entire industry centered around properly securing networks, and it takes people years to become proficient at it. Yet we still give nearly all home users a raw connection to the internet, expecting them to do the job of a network administrator with no training or even an indication that they are even lacking in knowledge.

This just silly. Most home users neither need, want, or are capable of administrating their own network connection. The ISP's should be doing this unless users specifically request to administer thier own connection. If we properly firewalled off hijacked machines it would cut spam and virus tremendously.

Re:Security...

[Frizzle Fry]

Why is this 4, Interesting? None of this is true or makes much sense. What "privledged access" is he talking about? If you run as root, your web browser and email program can do whatever it wants. If you run as a user, it has the rights of those user. This works the same on every other modern oprating system.

Use it to an advantage.

[jellomizer]

With all these viruses out there you should use this as an advantage to show people Linux or at least install Mozilla on their system so they wont open as many possible viruses in the future. Right now I bet there is a record number of people who are sick of using their computer right now. So it is you chance to be the savior and show them linux (Just the simple stuff web browsing, word processing, Printing, playing MP3) if they are sick enough of windows they will let you give linux a try. If they won't then at least see if they are willing to run Mozilla instead of IE.

Why I Believe It's Rising

[seanmcelroy]

Of course the sheer number of computers out there and various OS flaws makes for more virus targets, but as for actual viruses, I attribute this to more people just know how to code. Coding has steadily become something with a large 'entry learning cost', to something many more people could do. Whether intentional or not, the average joe is becoming more exposed to the methodology of writing functional pieces of code through macros, application-specific scripts, etc. And as more jobs are offshored and people in other countries learn and become proficient at it, it's as simple as with a larger base of people knowing how to write code, and a constant ratio of all people with bad intentions, it will just keep increasing.

Anyway, my two cents.

Re:Why I Believe It's Rising

[jellomizer]

Well unfortunately Microsoft made it really easy to make viruses. Back in the old days any virus that would do any real wide damage was made in assembly. Infected .EXE or .COM files and they did their thing then ran the rest of the program normally more or less. This took real skill to make a virus that would alter the code of the program and still run the application itself. Now any smuck can make a virus. Wait for a security release by Microsoft or check some hackers websites until you see a hole that you can exploit. Then make a server side program that copies itself to an other system using the same problem. No tricky coding no knowledge of the underlining architecture is involved. So back in the old days a virus writer was scum but at least he was respected for his intelligence. Now the modern virus writer is scum who is doesn't deserver any respect because what he is doing isn't that hard, an intro programming class could teach him the skills to do that.

Copycats and innovators

[leshert]

Based on the last few analyses I've seen, it appears that occurrences of real "new" viruses, meaning ones made from whole cloth that "advance the state of the art", as it were, haven't really been up that much.

What does seem to be up are "copycat" viruses--viruses that seem to be made from the new viruses. Either people are getting hold of the source to viruses, making a few modifications (to 'set their thumbprint' on them), and releasing them, or else just reverse-engineering the viruses. These "copycat" viruses do appear to be on the upswing. On the other hand, from all reports, the copycats tend to be poorly written and have flaws that either limit their spread or else limit their effectiveness.

The real innovators, though, are definitely getting better every year.

Is anyone doing that kind of analysis: rate of increase of "innovative", more dangerous viruses vs. random, garbage mods of existing ones? That would be an interesting glimpse into the state of the virus "industry".

Don Sven, cybercriminal

[Slashcrunch]

What a joke!

"...noticeable spike in cybercriminal activity, suggesting that even the arrest of Sven Jaschan, the German teenager who has owned up to writing Sasser and Netsky has done nothing to curb the problem."

Oh right, so the arrest of Sven was going to solve the problem...? Maybe he wasn't the cybercrime boss after all..? Idiots.

I wonder if virus writters know the damage they do

[jellomizer]

I am sure most of them see it as a joke or some political statement. But the political statement is pretty lame because no one knows what your angry about, "I Made this virus to protest the war?", "I made this virus to protest the the treatment of X", "I Made this virus because I dont like X company". When you get a virus it doesn't seem to spur the ideas that the virus writer wanted to portray.

Re:Gee, I wonder why?

[js3]

Rebellion? wtf. It's sad that every stupid thing youths do is blamed on rebellion. The only reason worm writers and script kiddies exist is because there are millions of computers hooked to the net with no protection at all just begging to be hacked.

or more to the point, if you leave your door open the thieves will come. We never learn from history. whatever we do it seems security is always an after thought. 9/11, worms, identity theft etc etc.

How to curb the problem...

[SamMichaels]

Say this with me: EDUCATE THE PERSON.

I can't even estimate the number of people with whom I've dealt that have expired, disabled or even damaged anti-virus programs on their computers. Their justification is "I don't know about spending that $X/yr...I don't need it."

For those with Windows versions that have the auto update features available, I can't even estimate the number of people with whom I've dealt that have it disabled, inactive or just ignore it. Their justification is "it slows down my AOL and it keeps popping stuff up or tries to restart the PC."

It's *GREAT* for business and part of me wants to thank the virus writers, spammers and spyware folks...you're providing me with a chance to make some beer money. However, what it boils down to is SOMEONE has to educate the masses...and that someone is all of us; even if we just remind our family and close friends.

Before your little brother or sister [son or daughter] go back to college this fall, MAKE SURE THEIR PC IS SECURE. The college folk with whom I've dealt have epidemics happening on campus...the networks are so overloaded that it's difficult to even fix the machine without taking it home.

Social Engineering

[ThisIsFred]

I'd say that social engineering worms are superior to every other type of malware, no matter how elegantly written past viruses/worms may have been. Why bother with rewriting partition tables, privilege elevation exploits, or VB scripts that take over Outlook, when the user will willingly run the code based on a one sentence message from some stranger? If you had told me this 10 years ago, I would have laughed at the prospect that gullibility and ease-of-use would be the two greatest threats to computer security. Amazing.

Sasser may have generated the most complaints for lazy [and/or clueless] admins, but these mailer worms are the biggest headache for me. Unlike Sasser (we have no cases of it), the social engineering ploy is going to continue to be effective until e-mail as we know it changes. Sender authentication + SMTP would fix both spam and virus problems, unfortunately at a great cost in convenience to users. Considering that almost everyone I know receives 90 per cent spam/viruses in their inboxes every day, that inconvenience is looking more trivial every year.

Raging at the Machines

[Esion Modnar]

Speaking of viruses, etc. It seems that in an incredibly noisome network environment of viruses, spyware, malicious toolbars, the prudent computer user/administrator has to load up his computer with antivirus programs, adware removers/blockers , firewall software, etc.

This serves to further complicate an already complicated system, and so strange side effects are more likely to pop-up (no pun intended). Such as between badly written printer drivers and firewall software, of all things.

Foolishly, a couple weeks ago I volunteered to help a friend out with his home computer. Of course, it was practically locked up with all the crap he had on there. I re-installed it (XP Home), put on the cr. updates, got him set up with Mozilla, AdAware, Spybot S&D, and ZoneAlarm.

I even talked him into getting his family members to use a limited account on the system, to hopefully keep the system as clean as possible for as long as possible. (However, I now realize that many games and other apps don't run properly under anything but an Admin account... so what's the use of that? Growl...)

Printer was working, everything. So I handed it over to him, and a couple days later he calls me to tell me that the printer stopped working. In his effort to be helpful, he clumsily re-installed the printer drivers, but with the old version, not the new. I got it straightened out again, and after some research, discovered that his printer driver (for an HP Photosmart 7350), has some kind of funky problem with the latest version of the free Zone Alarm. But I managed a workaround to this by having him restart his printer driver service. That was yesterday.

Now, something else has happened to the printer, the goddamned thing won't print at all, and re-installing the printer drivers makes not ONE fucking difference.

So what's my point (other than the one under my hat ha-ha)?

1) We have to try to protect ourselves from all the low-lifes trying to own our systems, and in so doing, make our systems even more complicated and difficult to get them to perform the tasks we have them for in the first goddamned place.

2) No matter how much you straighten out somebody's system for them, they can balls it right up again within a short span. Only this time, it's YOUR fault. (I thought of keeping the admin password only to myself for the trial period, but as I mentioned, in order to use it for games, they have to log in as Admin. So they can change anything, install anything, and then play innocent when it breaks.)