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.
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...
...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
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.
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!
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
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 ----
Isn't this exactly what VGrep was designed to sort out?
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.