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Computer Viruses Broke 100,000 In 2004
Sammy at Palm Addict writes "The count of known computer viruses broke the 100,000 barrier in 2004 and the number of new viruses grew by more than 50% according to news from the BBC. The BBC also reports that 'phishing attempts, in which conmen try to trick people into handing over confidential data, are recording growth rates of more than 30% with attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated.'"
They broke 100,000 in 2003 as well.
They can have my confidential data when they pry it from my dead frozen Windows OS... oh wait!
That is not a small number... that is a very large number!!! Ack poor compy.
Now how many non Windows viruses were there? You could probably count them on one hand. Let's give credit (or blame) where it is due.
I'm running Windows XP. Bill Gates says I'm safe from viruses.
Phising scams are becoming more prevelant on the internet and world wide web. Unfortunately, they are now starting to show up on 'Blogs as well.
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That would most likely be either the 5408th, 37322nd, 56446th or the 74353rd.
The most common sentence i heard from relatives this holiday was,
"Can you please fix my computer".
"I accidently clicked something and my computer is slow".
Should we really consider the dozens of variants of Bagle, Netstky, etc. separate viruses? Just because the anti-virus vendors choose to implement recognition of these variants by separate signatures, are they really different viruses?
I think it would be more interesting to know how many new virus/worm/trojan families were released year-to-year.
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
are they all unique? Or are many of them variants on an original? Seems to me we should only be counting big version
numbers and not the updates
That would be an interesting figure, and i guess it'd be pretty high. The ammount of mail traffic due to zombie machines spamming is amazing.
Does the article mention how many of those >100,000 affected the Mac OS platform?
The Top 10 List reads like the leader board at a chess competition.
1) Netsky-P
2) Zafi-B
3) Sasser
4) Netsky-B
5) Netsky-D
6) Netsky-Z
7) MyDoom-A
8) Sober-I
9) Netsky-C
10) Bagle-AA
---- You are fully entitled to my opinion.
I feel so cheated. My office Symantec Corporate Edition listed only 68585 viruses. Where are my other 31415 virus definition? :)
Just because you have an ultra-secure computer doesn't mean you should be complacent about theft of confidential data.
One of my buddies got his credit identity stolen a few months ago, he figures, by someone at a store who processed his credit application when he bought a home theatre system (Zero interest! Don't pay til way later!).
By the time collection agencies were knocking at his door, that store had closed.
The first thing I thought when I saw the headline was 'broke 100,000 what?'. The headline should have been better, like 'crossed the 100,000 barrier' or just 'crossed 100,000'.
The problem with this topic is that Microsoft is always blamed for making an inherently insecure operating system. They are also to blame because of "too little, too late", aka. activating the firewall by default only in SP2.
But quite frankly the ISPs and of course the individual users are to blame as well.
Why don't broadband ISPs require boradband firewalls? Only recently have some of them started to incorporate firewalled modems, and even then they're only sent to new customers. Would this mean that existing customers would have to spend money for a new router at the ISPs demand? You bet. But given the choice between disconnection or buying a $50 router, I'm sure that the vast majority would find a way to get that $50.
Additionally, most virii are sent over SMTP ports since they contain their own SMTP servers. I would not be against shutting down direct-from-client SMTP as long as those who run their own mail servers have the option of having their specific connection opened for SMTP traffic.
Finally, the users absolutely MUST be educated. There are enough free tools out there that no one should be unprotected. But again who should be responsible for teaching these end users?
At this point I would actually welcome something like a drivers license for broadband access. You don't gain the ability to use a broadband connection unless you prove to the ISP that you know the rules and that you are informed of how to be a responsible Netizen, including the use of firewalls, virus scanners, and alternate products like Mozilla, Eudora, Firefox, and others. If you break the "law" afterwards, your broadband privileges are revoked until you come into compliance.
If people were made aware that any virus or worm outbreak cause by them would mean the complete loss of their Internet connectivity, I think we'd see the number of virus infections drop dramatically.
But have an ISP do the responsible thing at the risk of pissing off customers? No, they'd rather spend billions of dollars a year on mail storage, spam-fighting hardware and software, increasing bandwidth usage, and always-rising amounts of mail to abuse@isp.net...and of course pass those charges onto us.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I've gotten so cozy in my nearly MS-free world since I managed to offload the last W2K machine that I forget about the risks, and how that antiviral cruft soaked up CPU and RAM.
Until, that is, I open an MS Office document with macros, then the whole sense of dread and ire comes back; and I'm always surprised and annoyed when the latest worm brings local networks staggering to their knees.
Damn those pesky terrorists
100, 100.000 or more... viruses are quite easy to contain because they are unquestionably nuked as such. What I don't like is all the other semi-legitimate software (hello adware, hello malware, hello spyware) which can fuck up your computer almost as bad or worse, except they come with an EULA.
I think all software should come with a self-signed key. By default it should allow upgrades by the same key (version 1.0->version 1.1), but not let other programs update eachother (e.g. explorer hooks, IE hooks, grab default applications, overwrite system libraries etc.)
I'm talking about all optional here, not DRM. I would love to have it such that I could install apache on my linux box, and not have it overwritten by anyone but apache (without my explicit permission) as well. Right now, once you have root, it is enough. But proper rights should be "need-to-have". Give a program permission to install itself, but don't fuck the rest of the system? Today, that can't be done.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What continues to blow my mind are the numbers of users who do not have anti-virus software installed or kept up to date on their systems. I really wish that Microsoft would include some basic type of anti-virus / anti-spyware utility with the operating system.
Yes, there would probably be a huge outcry about antitrust violations, but I believe the bottom line is that Microsoft has a duty to ship an operating system that is as reasonably secure as possible without including so many features as to push other vendors out of the market. I think the firewall in Windows XP SP2 is a good example of a compromise. The firewall includes enough basic features so that users aren't completely hanging out there in the wind, yet does not provide such a robust feature set so as to push third party firewall vendors out of the market. The disk defragmentation utility is another good example of a compromise. It has enough basic features to be useable, but not enough so as to push third party vendors out of the market.
Microsoft could do it if they wanted to, even if there was an outcry from vendors. Look at what they did with I.E. when they decided they wanted a piece of the browser market. For a more modern, post anti-trust trial example, look at what they are doing now with Windows Media Player. Yeah, the EU is calling them on it, but I think a real case could be made that a basic anti-virus / anti-spyware utility is as important a part of basic system security as a firewall.
Of course, if Microsoft just fixed I.E. and Outlook / Outlook Express, viruses and spyware wouldn't be as much of an issue, but we all know about how likely that is to happen.
I always see these comments, but I want to know; if the mass of people using Windows today all switched over and were using Linux tomorrow, do you honestly think all of a sudden the computer world would be a safer place? Do you envision this utopia where all users suddenly start keeping their machines up to date to thwart off the latest exploit? Would we suddenly have ma and pa computer user logging into application.bugzilla.com and filing bug reports? If a trojan/worm/virus/etc was sent out and the user got infected and a dialog popped up saying they had to enter their root password to run it, do you think these same users that download everything off the net, always just click "yes" without reading anything, are going to say "if I log in as root I can cause serious damage" and not log in as root? no, a majority of them will log in as root and get exploited.
The only difference I see will be all the Linux zealots either a) switching to another OS because now it's not 1337 to be running Linux or b) the same people that blame Microsoft for all the users problems, will now start blaming the user (instead of blaming Linux).
Viruses still exist because programmers still use obscure C functions full of holes and obscure processors full of executable stacks.
Please programmers, read the electronic paper "Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit" (->Google).
zzz
If you were paying attention, you'd have noted that not only is MSFT developing it's on AV tool but they also plan their own spyware scanner/remover.
/.ers old enough to remember that? They abandoned it, deciding it was too much work to maintain something that, at the time, wasn't viewed as a necessary compnent. And it wasn't needed, in a simpler, kinder, pre-internet world.
Windows 3.0 had MSAV, are any
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
How many of those are actually found in the wild? 100,000 is a big number, but ultimately meaningless when you want to assess the risk posed by viri etc. Throwing around big numbers like that is more the realm of marketing than that of engineering. :)
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
from TFA:
On the positive side, Finnish security firm F-Secure said that 2004 was the best-ever year for the capture, arrest and sentencing of virus writers and criminally-minded hackers.
In total, eight virus writers were arrested and some members of the so-called 29A virus writing group were sentenced.
Eight? EIGHT??
(deep sigh)
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
These things are looking more and more realistic/genuine all of the time. The last I got I opened up the email just to take a look, and the reply to address was "cgi.ebay.com/cgi-bin/"whatever else... it looked so nearly authentic it was scary. Everyone sees the cgi-bin at the ebay page, so having the name cgi.ebay.com was just... yah... I see why people fall for these, they are just uninformed, thinking someone actually was trying to steal their eBay account and such. What needs to be done is when you sign up for stuff, you are required to read aloud to a microphone some statement about how the company will never send you emails to verify account information, social security numbers, and so on. It's the only way to guarantee they read it, but perhaps they still wouldn't understand it. It's just scary. What we need is to make a global law about these things as well... if you are found doing this sort of act, you and your whole immediate family is executed in front of a live TV audience. I bet it'd get higher ratings that Survivor!
Yea... because hard drives never fail outright or suffer physical damage that prevents normal access to the data on them..... in fact, when that happens, it's because your neighbor's computer running Windows picked the lock on your front door, went into your den, and damaged the drive on your 1337 Lunax machine, right?
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Yeah, by sophisticated they mean its one where they put @citibank.com in the reply-to address of the email so you know its legit!