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July 29, 2005
The changing business of malware
Those bizarre individuals who plague us with viruses and worms and malware aren't just doing it to irritate us. They've got a business plan. And according to Kaspersky Labs - which is still our personal choice of malware defence, they've recently changed their strategy to improve their return on investment.
They must have had some business consultants in - the virus world's equivalent of McKinsey & Co - because according to Kaspersky, they're moving towards better defined structures and clearer business processes.
The company's research suggests that the industry has also picked up on the corporate fashion for mergers and acquisitions, and has possibly been doing some cost-benefit analysis. As a result, large-scale virus infestations - which are comparatively expensive - has increasingly given way to spam emails loaded with Trojans and backdoors.
The other advantage is that Trojans are easier to hide from anti-virus programs by using different compression utilities.
The article points to explosive growth in AdWare programs, and discusses a surge in the number of new malicious programs for platforms other than MS Windows (Symbian, UNIX, and .NET, but can the Mac viruses be far away?)
It's a fascinating article which will almost certainly teach you more than you've ever known about things like IM Trojans and, umm, "bankers". Merchant bankers, presumably.
Posted by cw at July 29, 2005 10:44 PM