Evolution of the species
Way back in the olden days of January 1999 WebSecure teamed up with a small New Zealand software firm called Designer Technologies to launch a new type of product into the Australian market. It would check and filter your email and was called MailMarshal. The tech heads amongst us might get a good laugh out of the fact the ruleset was just an INI file.
Back then people weren’t being facetious when they said “yeah, but what’s it for?”, they honestly couldn’t figure out why anyone would filter their own email. Some people were even sure they’d be buying into this email fad anyway. By the end of 2001 MailMarshal, and products like it, had become a fact of life for Corporate Australia.
What changed everything was the computer virus.
What we didn’t know in 1999 was that the Happy99 and Melissa viruses weren’t just one off aberrations. They were, rather, the writing on the wall. In May 2000 the ILOVEYOU worm exploded on the internet like Mr Creosote in a tissue factory. By the end of 2001 we’d seen Anna Kournikova, Sircam, Code Red, Nimda and Klez. This brief eighteen month period rocketed companies like Norton and McAfee to the revenue moon and erased any doubt as to whether companies needed products like MailMarshal. Into 2004 we saw such things as MyDoom, Netsky, Witty, Sasser, Vundio and BiFrost.
All ancient history now buried in just a few Wikipedia pages. Memories to be laughed at after one too many beers.
But they are memories and it’s interesting how things have changed. Viruses listed as ‘notable’ for 2008 were Mocmex, Torpig and Conflicker. I hardly remember a customer who had real problems with either Mocmex or Torpig, only Conflicker stands out in the memory. 2009 gets even more obscure, with something called the Daprosy worm — I’ve never heard of it.
Where did all the viruses go?
As a half answer I read this article today in the New Scientist where Dell warns that some of its’ server motherboards might have been delivered to customers with a hardware trojan installed on them. And this isn’t an isolated instance. As examples IBM gave away USB keys at Auscert with viruses on them and Google’s Android App store has had a problem with malware apps being posted on a semi-regular basis. These are well equipped large companies who you’d think would know better.
What’s changed here is that customers don’t often ring WebSecure anymore asking how to stop an avalanche of viruses through their email pipe. They tell me stories of home users sending them in via the VPN; of USB sticks being plugged at work and at home with all sorts of rubbish on them. The tell me their virus scanner picked up a virus on a video camera when they plugged it in.
So the little sods haven’t gone away, they’ve just moved.
It’s on the notebook wandering around the planet with your CEO. It’s on the computer your son’s friend brought over for a games night last Saturday. It’s on the USB giveaways at trade shows, the camera memory cards people are using and it’s being downloaded for free through the App store.
Like a real virus that we stomped on with antibiotics, it’s back.
It’s evolved.
And it’s quietly building up a host of back doors into your network.
I don’t know what happens next. But if there is a second coming of the virus I know it won’ t be quite as easy to stomp on a second time and it will be bloody annoying.
Comments
Anonymous
Yes, I haven’t heard of this thing called Daprosy until all my folders have “classified” sub-folders in them. Since then, I’m been security conscious!
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