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.'"

Comments

not suprising

[spac3manspiff]

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".

obligatory comment

[bigdaddyhame]

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

Symantec cheated me!

[sci50514]

I feel so cheated. My office Symantec Corporate Edition listed only 68585 viruses. Where are my other 31415 virus definition? :)

So, who's responsible?

[WidescreenFreak]

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.