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Dramatic Rise in E-Mail Viruses and Major Cyber Threats of 2003

In a recently published report by managed e-mail security provider Message Labs, we can see a dramatical increase in e-mail borne viruses - ratio of virus infected emails to clean e-mails increased 84 percent to 1:33 against 1:212 a year ago.. . .. In a recently published report by managed e-mail security provider Message Labs, we can see a dramatical increase in e-mail borne viruses - ratio of virus infected emails to clean e-mails increased 84 percent to 1:33 against 1:212 a year ago. Viruses and worms received an enormous amount of media coverage during this year. The year started with a bang: the Slammer worm exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft SQL 2000 servers and hit the Internet, resulting as one of the biggest attacks to date. In January we saw the first version of now infamous worm - Sobig that used a built-in SMTP client and local Windows network shares to spread and inspired a number of new variants that wreaked havoc throughout 2003. February brought us a combination of a worm and a trojan called Lovgate. The next few months gave us a couple of inventive worms: Ganda was using Iraqi war as its social engineering method and Fizzer was replicating over e-mail, as well over the KaZaa peer-to-peer network. August was a truly destruction derby month - it featured all the great ones: Sobig F, Blaster, Welchi and Mimail spread rapidly. Since then there was a large number of copycat worms, using mostly well known replication methods. I've talked with some of the leading experts from the anti virus and data security industry, so beneath, you can see their views on the most important malware happenings in 2003, as well as their future scopes for the upcoming year. The link for this article located at net-security.org is no longer available. . In 2003, the rise of e-mail viruses marked a turning point, with notorious malware like the Sobig virus causing global chaos and urging improved cybersecurity measures. Email Malware,Cyber Threats,2003 Security Report,Virus Outbreak. . Anthony Pell

Dec 23, 2003 • Anthony Pell Network Security