System alert: You've got worms
As anyone who has an e-mail account knows, the past few weeks have seen unprecedented virus attacks on computers around the world. With names like Sobig, Blaster and Welchia, these viruses are the bane of many an IT department--not to mention an "I was here" calling card for their nose-thumbing authors.
No longer confined to e-mail attachments, the latest worms can spread through the Internet, wreaking havoc as they take advantage of vulnerabilities in exposed computers. A company's entire network can be brought to its knees in minutes--and many recently were--as infected machines become mass-mailers that caused the virtual equivalent of clogged arteries.
Was the recent spate of attacks just more of the same--or are virus writers beginning to infect computers with other gains in mind? Experts at Wharton and elsewhere weigh in on possible motives, what businesses should do to protect themselves--and which industry sectors stand to gain from the chaos.
Some media reports suggest that a few of the present crop of viruses differ from those that infected computer systems in the past. One difference, they say, is that these bugs can capture e-mail addresses as well as IP addresses that can later be used to generate massive amounts of spam. How real is that concern? While it's tempting to wonder whether the latest viruses are being unleashed with a profit motive--and the goal of using computers to send spam--most people agree that it's unlikely.
"The haxors (a term derived from 'elite hacker') and 'script kiddies' who write viruses actually hate spammers," notes Dan Hunter, a professor of legal studies at Wharton. "It doesn't seem likely that they would get into bed together. The recent big viruses have been e-mail viruses because it's easy to exploit--since Microsoft Outlook is so pervasive and so buggy--and they cause huge problems. Most people run some type of mail client, as exploited by Sobig; quite a few people run SQL Server, as exploited by Slammer. This explains the pervasiveness of mail viruses better than the idea of a grand conspiracy of spammers."
