09 December 2006

Windows Vista and the coming criminal diaspora

"Researchers at Sophos discovered that four Internet viruses and worms--Stratio.zip, Netsky.d, and MyDoom.o--were able to execute on the Windows Vista system when an e-mail client other than the one native in Windows Vista was used. The viruses date back to 2004, but collectively they comprise 39.7 percent of all malware still circulating on the Internet today.

I think Windows Vista plays only a small part in this new criminal diaspora. There was a lull in malware during the year after Windows XP came out. I've always thought that criminals were just getting used to the new OS. But computer criminals have become far more sophisticated, well beyond our image of a lone hacker sitting in his parents' basement, and I think we won't see such a lull in 2007. With criminals dedicated to looking at flaws within different operating systems and within specific applications, I think I'm going to be busy in the coming months."

Click on the link below for the full article:

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3513_7-6672635-1.html

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