Macro viruses, which are triggered by automated tasks within programs such as Microsoft Word, are today's biggest threat. Peaks in new virus production occur in the fall and after the winter holidays - dates that coincide with the end of college vacations, when young programmers have had time to develop new viruses, according to Weafer. in Cupertino, Calif., another vendor of antivirus software, sees copies of about 15 new viruses a day, although most are never released, says Vincent Weafer, director of Symantec's Antivirus Research Center in Santa Monica, Calif. That's only a fraction of the 50,000 known malicious software codes, Viveros says. According to The WildList Organization International, an independent group that tracks viruses, there are more than 300 viruses "in the wild" that represent a threat to computer users. Viruses are still the biggest computer security problem. "And at the end of last year there was a virus called BubbleBoy that you could get just by opening your e-mail because it used the Visual Basic scripting language in the e-mail." "Last year came Melissa and the other mass-mailing e-mail viruses," Viveros notes. "Then came the applications with macros - programs like Microsoft Outlook or Word - that attracted a huge number of macro viruses," he adds. New malicious code appears monthly, generated by an underground community of programmers apparently motivated by the desire to cause damage, steal information or sometimes just prove their technical prowess. The denial-of-service attacks that brought major e-commerce Web sites to their knees earlier this year were launched by malicious software hidden on hundreds of Internet-connected computers without their owners' knowledge.Ī mini-industry of organizations, professionals and volunteers has sprung up to categorize malicious software, issue warnings and market software designed to detect, locate and eradicate such programs. The Chernobyl and Melissa viruses and the program caused extensive PC damage after spreading themselves around the world through e-mail last year. The different types of malicious software work by a variety of methods, and they have different potentials for causing damage. Viruses, worms, Trojan horses, logic bombs, zombies, password grabbers - the list gets longer and longer. Few aspects of computer security have achieved the notoriety of malicious software that preys on unsuspecting computer users.
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