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How Viruses Evolve Into All-Purpose Malware

Posted by timothy on from the increments-of-evil dept.

KingofGnG writes "Computer threats are continuously evolving, and some malicious codes are a problem difficult to tackle because of their inherent complexity and an intelligent design capable of constantly putting under pressure security companies. A remarkable 'intelligent' threat is for instance Sality, the 'new generation' file virus that according to Symantec has practically turned into an 'all-in-one' malware incorporating botnet-like functionalities as well."

2 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Virus? Malware? by virtualonliner · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think we are at a point where we cannot really distinguish between virus or spyware or scareware or whatever. Virus have already started doing what spyware doing a couple years ago. I mean, it sounds just pointless that we distinguish them. Bad program is a bad program. It does not matter what we call it. Guys at StopBadware came up with a good term a few years ago. It's a badware. It does not matter to the end user what it does!

  2. Making stupid boxes... by blahplusplus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... It might be time for the OS to compartmentalize the browser to have the net enclosed from the main system within a virtual machine. This way even if the "computer" were infected by malware it would disappear whne the VM was closed down, also a whitelist of Executables on the host machine would go a long way to stopping malware and the permanent logging/monitoring of executables or dlls being loaded that are unrecognized so they can be analyzed.