Four new Bagle worms added to Internet soup

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Ebola, no. AIDS, yes

The real nightmare is the AIDS case: something that
1) spreads quickly without generating crippling amounts of network traffic (thus keeping network admins from quarantining the infection).
2) Mutates so that standard antivirus signature generation takes a while
3) Cripples antivirus and other defensive mechanisms.
4) Corrupts (but does not cripple) the system during the course of the infection.

That last point is critical: file deletion is relatively harmless, because people notice that the file is gone. It's also relatively harmless because some people actually keep backups. Corruption, on the other hand, spreads and once it's discovered it requires that /every/ potentially corrupted file be examined, which is horrendously expensive.
A maximally-destructive worm or virus would leave the executable files, libraries, etc. alone and just corrupt user data.

Posted by: Yagotta B. Kidding   Posted on: 03/19/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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