The strange death of the mass mailing virus
Mass mailing viruses will go the way of macro viruses and become much rarer next year. Viruses such as Sober and MyDoom are simply not as effective as they used to be, Kevin Hogan, a Symantec Europe manager, notes. "People know it's risky to double click on viruses. For virus writers there's no technical kudos. Also mass mailing viruses are noisy, bringing attention to themselves, and that goes against the trend of developing malware that hides its presence on infected systems," he said.
Last year Hogan predicted browser vulnerabilities would become less important in 2004: "I've had to eat my words on that. IE vulnerabilities are often used to surreptitiously load malware onto people's PCs. Client side flaws will continue to be important next year."
Once upon a time, Virus writers were motivated by notoriety, but now the profit motive is more important. The use of keylogging Trojans in phishing scams is one way they can make money. Selling access to botnets - networks of compromised machines - is another potential money-spinner, as is adware.
