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Top Viruses, Worms and Malware in 2006
An anonymous reader writes "HNS is running an article with a list of those malicious codes which, although they may not have caused serious epidemics, stood out in one way or another. Some of the categories are: the biggest snooper, the most moralistic, the worst job applicant and the most tenacious. From the article: 'The most competitive. Once the Popuper spyware has installed itself on a computer, it runs a pirate version of a well-known antivirus application. Far from trying to do the user a favour, it is actually trying to eliminate any possible rival from the computer. It seems that the fight for supremacy has also reached the world of Internet threats.'"
Cleansing home PCs, I've seen some of the more exotic exploits become commonplace, including:
.DLL as a print monitor; .DLL, registered in a CLSID key, warning of SPYWARE!!! from the system tray; .DLL's.
Direct Revenue hiding its core
one lone
launching executables from Group Policy subkeys;
populating subkeys of Winolgon\Notify with self-renaming
Hiding malware so it launches before Explorer (and even before the antivirus app) is sneaky, underhanded, and ensures a steady stream of income so I don't need to get an actual job. Editing the Registry hives from WinPE is the only cost-effective way to remove many of these things, and Suzy Homeuser wull never be ready for that.
So here's to you, scumbag malware writers... and here's to Microsoft for leaving soooo many ways to launch your malware: Thanks for paying my mortgage. Without security holes, and the slimeballs who exploit them, I'd be back selling auto parts.
Apparently it only works properly on Windows... http://www.pandasoftware.com/com/virus_info/encycl opedia/overview.aspx?lst=det&idvirus=122900&sitepa nda=particulares
:wq
Well, that's only part of the truth. There are three reasons why Linux viruses don't get around like Windows viruses; better security, lower population (also encompasses the lack of monoculture in network applications), and more careful users. And none of those reasons is the "real reason", they work in combination with each other to make the difference really really big.
The time is ripe for a beneficial virus, one that does no harm to the host computer, but acts as a keylogger that will play a very loud annoying buzing noise and kill all open apps if the user types: "misa campo", "made of win", "internets", "begs the question", or any other word or phrase from a list of current phrases used by morons.