Viruses on Rise, But Are Companies Liable?

Computer viruses designed to steal victims' personal and financial information -- names, addresses, and credit card numbers -- are becoming increasingly widespread on the Internet, according to an Internet-security trends report by security software maker Symantec Corp. Unfortunately, companies are trying to limit their liability when such online security breaches hijack customer data.
Symantec's study of the 10 most prevalent viruses during the last six months of 2003 shows a 519 percent increase in the volume of virus-laden messages that constituted threats to user privacy and confidentiality compared with the first six months of the year. These infectious programs sought either to expose documents or to filch data like passwords and financial-account information, often using programs for logging users' keystrokes and sending the data back to virus authors.

There was also a definite increase in viruses and worms that open backdoors to provide hackers with entry into victim PCs at a later date. Backdoors allow hackers to download any program they choose, including those that steal personal information, to turn the PCs into spam relay points, or create foot soldiers to carry out other Internet attacks.