The end of the Age of Worms?

After Sobig.f and Mydoom.a, after the infamous cyber-war between Mydoom, Bagle and Netsky authors, I thought the situation would only get worse. But now it’s the end of October and we haven’t seen a serious email worm outbreak for months.

When I sit down and think of why this year is so different from previous years, I see several factors that help break the pattern:

Firstly, virus writers have been arrested worldwide, and there has been lots of media coverage. The computer underground sees that cyber criminals are going to be caught, no matter where they hide.

Secondly, we have improved our generic and heuristic detection because of the virus outbreaks over the past year. We are also detecting and blocking possible epidemics better and faster.

Thirdly, I think maybe users are beginning to be less careless about opening emails and clicking on attachments and/or enclosed links.

A few other ideas come to my mind, but they concern recent events in the computer underground and I’ll leave that for next time…

{to be continued}