Squashing the next worm
Another virus, another epidemic.
Two years after the Code Red and Nimda worms spread across the Internet, home users and many companies still aren't doing enough to secure themselves against Internet threats, said security experts.
"Software is still flawed, people are still not patching, and companies are still not making security a focus," said Marc Maiffret, chief hacking officer for security software maker eEye Digital Security. "They didn't after Code Red, they didn't after Nimda, and they didn't after Sapphire/Slammer. Mostly likely, they won't after this worm either."
The criticism comes after the poorly programmed MSBlast worm spread worldwide. Despite numerous flaws in its code, the worm--also known as W32/Blaster and W32.Lovsan--infected more than 330,000 computers running Microsoft Windows. The computers were vulnerable as the result of a month-old flaw their owners had left unpatched.
The same script played out during the Code Red worm epidemics in July and August of 2001, the Nimda worm attack in September 2001 and the Slammer attack this past January. The lack of progress in lessening the effects of such attacks has security experts worried that companies and individuals are making too little headway, if any, in securing their computers.
"This worm shows that, even in a relatively sane scenario, what many are doing doesn't work," said Ted Julian, chief strategist for network-security company Arbor Networks. "We had weeks to prepare, and we aren't able to secure everything."
