Virus infection rates soar

[InfoSec News <isn () C4I ORG>]

Forwarded By: "A.Mouse" <a.mouse () arpa fsnet co uk>

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/15751.html

By: John Leyden
Posted: 02/01/2001 at 12:02 GMT

The number of email viruses soared last year to the point where one in
700 emails was infected, according to a survey by a firm which scans
electronic communications for malicious code.

MessageLabs, which scans over 3 million emails per day, said it had
detected and stopped an average of one email virus every three minutes
during 2000. In some months, the number of viruses per email reached
one in 700, up from one in 2000 at the start of the year.

May - the month of the Love Bug - saw 23,290 viruses detected, but
that was by no means the worst. October topped the list with 30,678
virus incidents.

Alex Shipp, chief anti-virus technologist at MessageLabs, said: "Virus
activity now is as bad as when the Love Bug was out. People's guard
has gone down and they've got lax. There are no real killer viruses
out there at the moment that would really alert people."

He added that typical of such viruses currently doing the rounds is
the Prolin worm which poses as 'a great Shockwave Flash movie'. Prolin
replicates by opening the address book in Outlook Express, scans all
available disk drives and infects ZIP, MP3 and JPEG files.

Other viruses in the 'top 10' public enemy list included the Love Bug
and JS/Kak-m, the worm virus that embeds itself in Outlook Express
without having to open an attachment.

Jack Clark, European product manager at Network Associates, said that
last year saw an explosion in mail-enabled viruses, many of which
targeted Outlook users because the program is the most commonly used
email client. He predicted that viruses on platforms such as Palm and
WinCE will become more of a problem as personal digital assistants use
becomes common in business.

MessageLabs' Shipp said that 2001 will prove as dire a year for
infection as 2000 unless "IT departments pull their finger out and
update their software" and users learn that opening an attachment they
are not expecting means running a high risk of infection.

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