Computer viruses hit one million

[TechBear_Seattle]

Computer viruses hit one million

The number of viruses, worms and trojans in circulation has topped the one million mark.

The new high for malicious programs was revealed by security firm Symantec in the latest edition of its bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report.

The vast majority of these programs have been created in the last twelve months, said Symantec.

Cyber criminals pump out malware to fool anti-virus programs which look for characteristics they have already seen.

The article continues at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7340315.stm

[notesdev]

1. Legislators are clueless

Any server on the net is going to have a log full of attacks that could be traced, if there were any mechanism to do so.

And they invariably lead to China, Taiwan, Russia, India, Korea, Brazil, and so on.

Spam is a big source of the problem. Spam gives people links that if clicked accidentally can direct them to hostile servers and infect their machines. Depending on the email client (*cough* Microsoft *cough*), just receiving a hostile piece of email is enough.

But we leave the pipes open anyway, even though the cost of cutting those nations off would be less than the cost of remediating the damage that comes from those sources.

Cut off a nation's internet connections and they will get serious about prosecuting computer crimes.

Until then, it's the Wild West out there.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. Well, hell, I more than half believe that a huge percentage of them

are cooked up by the government itself - what better excuse for heavy-handed regulation, restrictions on web access, censorship, shutting down servers, than to 'protect' the public?

[notesdev]

3. a bit fantastical

If you had a server on the net you could see where this stuff is coming from. The US government would have no need to invent these things, other people are doing it for free, unasked.

Taiwan and China make up about 80% of the spam relay attempts, hack probes, and other hostile traffic that hits my network. For a while I was able to effectively secure my network by simply denying all traffic originating from those countries. The threat is a little broader now, so I need to be a bit finer in my filtering, but locking out those two countries is the best thing any sysadmin can do for their systems.