Name That Worm

Ant wrote to mention a C|NET article reporting on the Common Malware Enumeration (CME) initiative, now emerging from its test phase. From the article: "Next month, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) plans to officially take the wraps off the effort, meant to reduce the confusion caused by the different names security companies give worms, viruses and other pests. The project assigns a unique identifier to a particular piece of malicious software. When included in security software, in alerts and in virus encyclopedia entries, this identifier should help people determine which pest is hitting their systems and whether they are protected ..."

Comments

Welcome, if not overdue

[Sv-Manowar]

If this step does anything to simplify the myriad of naming schemes provided by security & antivirus companies, then its more than welcome. Working out exactly what worms have which effects is hard enough without the confusion of complex names and differing schemes. However, the voluntary nature of this new naming scheme may mean it sits alongside the current identifiers and names, which would significantly lessen its effect. I guess only time will tell which way the companies decide to go..

Naming Worms - Virii's pride

[Fox_1]

To be honest I imagine it's pretty kewl to have created a nasty piece of software that takes down millions of computers and costs billions in damages. At least in a perfect world where everybody is happy, corners are round and nobody ever gets hurt. It's even cooler if the virus you create gets a name like 'code red' or 'blaster' or 'buddy the smackhappy clown' and gets all sort of media coverage and everybody recognizes the name. I maen that's pretty awesome. So I hope that this naming system the 'Common Malware Enumeration' , makes names that are as exciting as it's own. In other words, boring. Take away some of the fun that the virus writers have been enjoying from their nasty little creations.

Re:Naming Worms - Virii's pride

[jayloden]

I have to agree with you whole-heartedly here. I make a virus removal tool in my spare time that deals with IM-specific viruses. There was one virus that I was able to track back to the author (which is a whole nother story), and he got a little upset when I pointed out his name and contact info on my website for infected users to contact him. Shortly thereafter, "someone" attempted to access both my gmail account and free DNS accounts and reset the passwords, among other threats and such that I received.

This virus evidently shared code with some other virii that had come before it, to the point of the same name in a registry key/file. As such, it was fairly clear that someone had "borrowed" some code. So, I decided to change the name of the virus to "The Copy Paste" virus, with the intended results of making the author even more upset. It is most definitely very much a pride issue with virus authors, and I think you're correct in your assertion that keeping the name boring helps prevent the "cool" factor from being quite so high.

Re:In Soviet Russia..

[eklitzke]

Can people NOT moderate these as funny? Because really, they're not.

Good first step, common name still needed though.

[Vellmont]

It's great that there will be at least one recognized identifier for worms, but when people talk about the worm are they really going to refer to it as CME-123 (for example)? There still needs to be a common name that's accepted. We don't for instance have 15 different names for chicken pox. The virus is called varicella-zoster, or human herpes virus 3. Everyone knows what chicken pox is though.

Off topic Norton rant!

[Humorously_Inept]

What will the agreed-upon name be for that piece of malware? Seems like Norton's more tenacious than and presents a larger array of system-wide issues to users than do the many of the viruses/worms/trojans it's supposed to protect against.

Worm naming...

[jemenake]

Are they going to use alphabetical-ordered human names like with hurricanes?

Can't you just see the newspaper headlines already? "Worm Andrew Batters Microsoft Servers! The worm overtopped firewalls and flooded into data-centers throught the country. Emergency officials said that it will take a week to repair the firewalls and begin letting users back into the data..."