Slashdot Mirror
Blackworm Dud Highlights Virus Naming Mess
An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com is running a story that looks at the total mess that the anti-virus companies made in naming the latest overhyped virus threat. According to the article, 'Blackworm' or the 'Kama Sutra worm' was the first major test of a new U.S.-government funded initiative to introduce some sanity into the virus-naming business. From the article: 'For most of [the antivirus vendors], this is like Esperanto: You can speak it if you want to, but everyone else is going to carry on babbling in their own native tongue, so it doesn't really matter.'"
They should have just had everyone call it the Sex for Gymnasts virus.
Grammar Lesson: you're is a contraction of "you are"; your means you possess something; yore means days gone by.
Hej! Mi povas paroli esperanto, you insensitive clod!
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Really, I think this would simplify things a bit. Assign every virus an ID number. Then, people could search a CENTRAL database by typing in the ID number that their anti-virus software reports, and be able get whatever info they need about the virus. The current naming conventions are very confusing for some people.
My sig is permanently on strike.
Thank God. Imagine if Kama Sutra hit hardly. That would put microsoft in an aquard position...:)
... is intentional. It is due to companies trying "differensiate" themselves from the competition, and very little to do with increasing the security of their paying customers. Quite simply: it is marketing.
They got most of the article right, but it isn't Total Mess + Government = ???. It's Total Mess = Government. I guess that's all the article really needed to say.
Honestly, most of us use just one anti-virus application. They're all pretty much equal on what viruses they detect, and the entire Kama Sutra situation called for one simple procedure: "There's a virus possibly hitting Friday, so make sure you update your anti-virus." There really isn't much need to name the virus the same across all AV apps or even countries or any of that, just warn people, use the name you think is decent, and get them to update their AV files.
Wow (not WoW)! My tax dollars at work. I am so thrilled now!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
What do you think sells more papers:
The "Cyber Herpes" virus is coming!
or, "5437B" is coming!
Assigning viruses numbers is an interesting idea, making tracking viruses easier in some ways, but much harder in others. For example, one couldn't say on the Nightly News: "Virus #34932423 has recently stricken the Internet, destroying the International Llama Foundation's forums and redirecting all Google search results to the federal government. Watch out, folks, #34932423 is a real nasty!" If the authorities do not name viruses, they will be given names by the common people to make communication easier. Much better to have an organization give each virus a name that has some chance of making sense, rather than having the masses choose a name that may or may make any sense, i.e. "the blue screen of death virus has hit again!"
games journalism blog
They should have an International Virus Standards Committee, so that we can waste lots of time and money deciding what the next virus should be named...
My point is, who cares what it's named! A mass mailing worm is just that. Shouldn't matter if you call it "Blackworm" or "You got f'ed in the a". If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...
I can't believe that is the best name the government can come up with. It sounds more like an STD than a computer virus.
...to see if they will promise to use only one name & abbreviation next time:
'Latest Overhyped VIrus Threat' or 'LOVIT'
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Oh boy this is a great idea.
Three genus(es?) = os
Microsoft
Linux
MAC
species = app
ie
etc...
phylum = number (increment)
now here is the kicker: Microsoft will have a canary.
as the numbers will hit the MAXINT for a 32bit OS
newscaster: "MSIE999999999999999 was found in the wild today"
producer: "mumble mumble"
newscaster: "sorry that was MSIE 10 to the power of 999999999999"
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
i think it's an absolutely silly name. they should hire more creative minds to come up with these names...
The problem is all the variants of a given malware. For most users, the signature of the payload is less meaningful than the subject line of the e-mail. A virus email that promises Kama Sutra pictures is "different" from one promising Miss Lebanon even if the underlying payload and behavior is identical.
Perhaps AV experts need to use cladistics with a standardized set of feature dimensions. A cladogram of the virus varients and some threshold distance in feature-space would help segment similar and dissimilar malware.
I actually don't hold out much hope for this because malware is an adaptive threat. Malware creators might (and do) easily take steps to obfuscate their warez -- creating spurious variants for the express purpose of confusing AV software, news reporting, and users. The more variants that appear, the harder it is to counter the threat.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Esperanto is now a virus? I hope it catches on quicker than it was as a language. Otherwise, it'll take 50 years to get anywhere.
Aaaaaaaand THIS is why geeks should never work in marketing (just as marketers should never make tech decisions.
Are you going to get the public to take a nerd warning about "m71.4445876.EU.1393" or one called "CreditRatingRaper" more seriously?
You should HAVE a more stable designator, but get the companies to agree on a popular name also, maybe by letting them name the biggies round-robin style.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel
To stay ontopic, here's the list of companies and the name they picked for this virusSo who was calling it "Kama Sutra" ?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
What a disappointment!! I was hoping for a day off from work, BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
No crashing networks, no choked ISPs, my ping in SWG didn't even go up. What a waste of paranoid hysteria....
I'm sure the big Antivirus guys will resist tooth and nail any external change like the CME numbers. As the article says, they aren't the target for this naming scheme, the people who have to deal with these viruses (like a lot of us slashdotters) are the real people who benefit. With a common naming that us end users can agree on we can finally communicate about what virus is what, instead of having some giant table to translate all the time. People will still use the more common names in the press, etc.
The CME number will be like the scientific name of a plant or animal. Specialized to a certain group, but entirely definitive. The antivirus vendors will all eventually have to start publishing a CME identifier with each virus so any administrator will know "what the hell virus is that?".
AccountKiller
The French will still want to make up their own name. They did for Email.
Was it a dud beacuse it was nothing to worry about in the first place and the hype was overrated?
or was it a dud beacuse of all the hype and people patched beforehand?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And a very nice tartan that is too!
Common Malware Enumeration (CME) explanation.
CME List, which has numbers above 900.
--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits and paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans get Iraq oil profits, and American citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
Isn't this exactly what VGrep was designed to sort out?
... Someone write the Answer-to-everything-is-42 virus.
Sure, they may run out of names, but they can reuse names as they do for hurricane names, with the exception of widespread popular hurricanes/worms/virii, which can be retired, just like some hurricane names.
you mean they havent switched to linux yet?? ahhh oh well one day they will learn.
Can anyone rattle off the IP address for www.yahoo.com? (wait.. around here.. bad question...)
But you get the point. We as humans name everything in order to keep better mental reference and remember it. They could have called it the Apple portable media player , but they came up with iPod. And people remember it.
I think that here in the geek world we so commonly have to reference things by numbers that we forget that names are for people who aren't quite as numerically attuned as us.
Now, do they go overboard sometimes? Yes, they try to name things to grab attention and be "sexy" and "something catchy". My opinion is to take some moderately unique word or phrase found in the signature or output and use that. It's what was done and its still done a good bit of the time.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Why does everyone insist that using a universal numbering system will suddenly prevent anyone from referring to the virus as anything but that universal number? How many of you have used an ISBN number for a book and found very convenient? Did you then go around to all of your friends and say, "Wow I just bought 0-672-32308-7. It was great!"?
Having some sort of universal numbering system does not remove the need for normal names and titles. It just provides an authoritative convension that can be relied upon on a technical level.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
What's the point of email if you can't open your email?
I can't believe how much money and resources are wasted on viruses.
There's a naming convention for hurricanes, there ought to be one for viruses. My spouse's company was ready for this virus, had information posted for everyone on the intranet about it. Even other IT people were confused and after reading about the Kama Sutra virus here on Slashdot, wanted to know why there wasn't any information regarding that ("My Wife" may have been the name used in the initial security bulletin). If even other geeks are blowing a gasket, imagine the general public.
Cyberspace is now considered to be a likely arena for future wars (or terrorism, or organized crime). Sure, the Kama Sutra worm seems trivial. But when a virus threatens to bring down a major part of the US economy, then a little investment in improved communication will pay off.
Even better sources for indecent Esperanto can be found in the article How To Talk Dirty In Esperanto: Kiel Paroli Maldece en Esperanto. When you're done with that, check out Tabuaj Vortoj En Esperanto.