Communication security experts do not all agree that cell phone and mobile device viruses pose imminent threats to U.S. consumers. Whether virus attacks become a problem in six months or five years might depend on how cell phone carriers react now to the threat potential.
June's list of reported viruses shows Mytob variants taking seven of the top ten spots in a Sophos Labs report.
The virtual plague of the Mytob family has generated 40 percent of the threat reports submitted to security software firm Sophos.
Mytob Tops Of The Virus Charts
"It seems that the more established virus families, such as Netsky and Zafi, are meeting their match," said Carole Theriault, security consultant at Sophos.
As virus writing is increasing, average time to infection is decreasing, according to a Danish Internet security firm. Sophos' chart of activity for the first six months of 2005 reports there is now a 50 percent chance of being infected by an Internet worm in just 12 minutes of being online using an unprotected, unpatched Windows PC.
Sophos has revealed the results of its comprehensive research into the last six months of virus activity. In 2005 so far, Sophos has detected and protected against 7,944 new viruses - up 59% from the first six months of last year. In line with this substantial increase in virus writing, is the rapidly decreasing average time to infection. There is now a 50% chance of being infected by an internet worm within just 12 minutes of being online using an unprotected, unpatched Windows PC.
Internet users alarmed over news of Michael Jackson's death or dark conspiracies behind the demise of Pope John Paul II should perhaps be more concerned that they received another new e-mail worm.
Researchers at security firm Sophos PLC warned today of the spread of the Kedebe-F e-mail worm, which carries a variety of subject headers and messages touting breaking news. However, users who click on the attached file could have their security software and firewall disabled, according to Sophos.
Malware writers seem to have picked up a new trick for blocking anti-virus updates. Usually this is done with hosts-file by redirecting hostnames to localhost. Today we were looking at a new trojan called Fantibag that uses packet filtering to achieve the same goal.
This trojan installs a packet filtering policy that blocks access to several anti-virus companies and other mostly security-related sites.
Maintenance data on nuclear power plants were leaked and shown on the Internet after a computer virus attacked a personal computer of an employee of Mitsubishi Electric Corp.'s subsidiary in charge of plant inspections and maintenance, it was learned Thursday.
Data equivalent to 31 floppy disks, including a draft report of power plant inspections, a repair manual, name lists of inspection workers and photographs of the inside of the plants, were leaked from the employee's privately owned PC.
As virus writers release multiple variants of Mytob in a bid to create a super worm, experts say vigilant security measures should block any master menace.
The creators of Mytob tweak the code within the worm in a similar way to developers trying to perfect new software, and have released hundreds of variants of the mass-mailing worm.
James Kay, the chief technology officer at e-mail security company Blackspider Technologies, said Friday that vulnerability assessment worms are quite rare at the moment. However, their number will probably increase as virus writers focus their attacks more carefully and try to avoid detection, he said. "We haven't seen many of them so far, but it's an example of a trend that could accelerate," Kay said. "The idea of reconnaissance fits our view that worms are becoming lower volume and more targeted.
Virus writers have created mobile phone malware that poses as a pirated copy of F-Secure's mobile anti-virus software. Skulls-L is a minor modification of the Skulls-C Trojan. Only the names have altered to leave the innocent at risk: Skulls-L unlike Skulls shares the same name as F-Secure's mobile anti-virus installation package, and the Trojan shows dialog text "F-Secure Antivirus protect you against the virus. And don`t forget to update this!"
