Computer Viruses Skyrocket

Ready to hit 1 million
May 2008
by Ryan Hagen

It’s taken over two decades to build its portfolio, but by the end of the year the computer virus is finally predicted to be a millionaire. After a 25% growth in the last year alone, computer viruses and trojans will have reached the one million mark.

Corporate and personal security methods have become much more sophisticated in recent years, which has forced malware writers to become more creative with developments of malicious code. The security clamp down by businesses and personal users has resulted in more malicious code, more frequently, as malware writers try to find ways to evade diligent security practices.

Sophos chief technology officer, Paul Ducklin said that around 90 per cent of malware has a "fix" created for it immediately. Ducklin notes that although security practices have gone to great lengths protecting from spam and phishing, there is still an ever-growing threat of the "drive-by-download", where hackers place malicious code into legitimate websites, usually going undetected by visitors and security because it only requires a very small amount of code.

A report released by Microsoft said that the number of computers infected with trojans was up 300 per cent in the last half of 2007.

"The numbers have simply exploded, it's huge," Vinny Gullotto, general manager of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, said Tuesday. "There is a lot of criminal intent there."

The report says that the figure has catapulted because of the prevalence of malware-detecting software that is being installed on computers, and because the trojan has become the “tool of choice” for cyber criminals.

Jimmy Kuo, principal architect with Microsoft’s Malware Protection Centre, said that system administrators have become well-versed in blocking executable files sent via email, so now cyber criminals are being forced to send out spam messages to trick victims into visiting malicious websites.

"Executables are often being stripped completely regardless of what they are," Kuo said.

F-Secure Asia Pacific (which logs about 25,000 malware samples per day) vice president Jari Heinonen, said the trend for malware will be to target the kernel sector through rootkits such as Mebroot, which attacks the bootstrap sector. The resurgence of Mebroot, a DOS-based malware, was recently detected last month, after a 15-year hiatus.

The one million viruses are part of a staggering $100 billion industry that aims to sabotage and steal from unsuspecting computer users.

Whereas hackers were once considered nuisances and vandals, they are now motivated by monetary gains, and are in turn costing the general public exorbitant amounts of money.

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