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Thursday, February 12, 2004
Ng: Delivering viruses through junk mail
By Wilson Ng
Wired Desktop
LOSSES. Trend Micro, the world’s third largest anti-virus software manufacturer (after Symantec and Network Associates), estimated that computer virus attacks cost global businesses $55 billion in damage in 2003, a sum expected to further increase this year.
This is about double the roughly $20 billion to $30 billion damage in 2002 from the virus attacks, which was already double the $13 billion in losses in 2001, according to various industry estimates.
The other obvious threat to computers is spam or junk email. It is estimated that hundreds of millions of junk mail messages are sent every day. I receive about 300 to 400 of these every day. Their return email changes every day, so it is a challenge to blacklist them, and many are designed to get through most of the anti-spam filters.
What authorities are predicting is that spam will not only increase, but also become hideouts for viruses and hacking programs. For instance, spam can be used to attack networks, and the virus is used to do not only one thing, but several things.
Virus makers originally had one thing in mind—to destroy the computer, or the files, and then announce itself. Now, the viruses are made to do various things.
The last virus, mydoom, was used to send denial of service attacks to websites as well as send advertising mail. What makes it dangerous is that many of the people hit may not know that there is already a virus inside—either stealing confidential information or using their machines and address books to send spam mail.
It is now very difficult because the viruses will not only send themselves to many of your email addresses, but they will also randomly get these addresses and mark them as the senders. Thus, you will routinely receive advertising messages from people you know, but these people’s computers are clean and they did not send these messages.
It becomes a challenge to know where the spam is really coming from, or to pinpoint which computers were really hit by viruses. The only remedy is to ensure you have the latest anti-virus software and scan the computer periodically. Junk mail should also be routinely screened and filtered.
In the past, we were advised not to click on message attachments from people we didn’t know. Today, we should now also pay attention to messages from people we know, because it may not really be they who sent them.
According to Trend Micro, the number of attacks for the six months to June 2003 numbered over 70,000, which is twice the number for 2002.
As computer networks become more important, there is now more to lose if the network is compromised.
(email: wilson@esprint.com.)
(February 12, 2004 issue)
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