Mass mailed worms here to stay
Predictions of the demise of the mass-mailed worm are premature, a security researcher said Tuesday [US].
"I think that's maybe wishful thinking," said Pete Simpson, the manager of ClearSwift's threat lab as the security firm released its annual 2004 retrospective report.
Some analysts have said that the traditional mass-mailed worms -- like Bagle and Netsky and MyDoom, all big names in 2004 -- will fall by the wayside as hackers and criminals turn to other techniques, such as network worms that use operating system vulnerabilities to compromise computers ala Sasser. Simpson says the report of their death, to paraphrase Mark Twain, has been greatly exaggerated.
"We've seen several Bagles and MyDooms in the last few weeks. I don't think [mass-mailed worms] are lying down. Instead, they'll diversify by mixing other attack avenues rather than dropping mass-mailing."
That trend of increasing complexity has been cited by security experts for the past two years. In early 2004, the buzzword was "blended threat," but Simpson's term now is "convergence."
"The compartmental labels such as 'virus,' 'worm,' 'Trojan,' 'spyware,' and 'phish' are losing utility," he said, "as multifaceted malware emerges sharing several of these attributes. This is a quite different phenomenon from the so-called 'blended threats' that simply use several spreading vectors, such as mass-mailing, network shares, and file-sharing networks."
