2003 virus damage totalled $55 billion. "SINGAPORE: Trend Micro Inc. is the third-largest antivirus software maker in the world. It said that in 2003 computer virus attacks resulted in $55 Billion in damage to global businesses. This number will increase this year. According to industry estimates the virus attacks caused losses of between $20 billion and $30billion for companies in 2002. This was an increase from around $13billion in 2001. This was the headline across thousands news agencies desk January 2004. How much was it worth to your company out of $55billion How much did it cost someone in your network?

I. The Why

On average, 10-20 viruses are released each day. Very few viruses ever make it to the?Wild' stage. stage. Viruses exploit security flaws within software and operating systems. These flaws are as obvious as Microsoft Windows NetBIOS share to exploit buffer overloads. Buffer Overflows are caused by an attacker sending longer responses to a program than was expected. If the victim software has poor design, the attacker can use memory overflow to execute malicious code.

Different reasons can lead to viruses being created. These reasons range from financial to political to notoriety to hacking instruments to pure malicious intent sophos España.

Political: Mydoom, a viral infection that spreads with a political agenda, is a good example. The SCO Group (Microsoft) and Microsoft were two of the victims. The SCO Group claims to own a substantial portion of Linux source code. They threatened to sue anyone who uses Linux operating system (with "stolen” programming source). The virus was very successful in destroying SCO's site. Microsoft managed to dodge disaster by giving enough time for preparations for the second attack.

Financial: Other parties may hire virus writers in order to leech financial data from competitors or make their competitor look bad before the public. Industrial espionage has a high level of risk and high payout and can result in a person being sent to prison for their entire lives.

Notoriety. Some viruses are written solely for their own benefit. This is especially true if the virus authors are script kidsdies as it helps the authorities track them. There are many famous viruses that contain the email address of their author either in the source codes or open scripts.

Hackers Hackers often create controlled viruses in order to gain remote computer access. They may also add a Trojan horse as a payload in order to gain access to the victim system.

Malicious: These individuals are the most hazardous. These hackers code viruses in order to cause havoc on networks and other systems. They enjoy the complete destruction and pleasure of creating, so they are not script kids.

Many of the viruses released and written are viruses modified by script kiddies. These viruses can be called "generations" of the original virus. The original virus is rarely changed enough to be distinguishable from these versions. This is due to the fact script kiddies don't know what the original code does. They only alter what they recognize (file extension, victim's website). This makes script kiddies extremely dangerous.

II. Computer systems have been plagued by malicious code since before computers were common household items. Viruses or worms are examples if malicious code that is designed to spread and cause a system not intended to perform a function.

Viruses require that programs be activated and run before they can become dangerous or spread. After the payload has been deployed and the program is running, infected computers will be found. Hackers or Crackers can cause a computer to crash or reboot if they have copied a virus onto the system.

There are four main ways viruses can be spread:

1. Email Marketing: Spreading the Word

2. Networks for spreading the word

3. Spreading via manual installation

4. Spreading through the boot sectors

Email Marketing: Spreading the Word

A virus can spread through many email messages. When the user opens an infected email, or previews it before opening it, the virus becomes active and spreads instantly.

Networks for spreading the word

Many viruses are network aware. This is when they search for unsecure systems on the network and copy their code to those systems. This behavior causes network performance to suffer and viruses can spread quickly. Hackers, crackers, and others also use network and Internet connections to infect your system. They scan systems for vulnerabilities and target those that are known to be vulnerable. This is why it's so important to keep your systems up-to date.

Spreading via manual installation

You are at greater risk of infection if you download or install software from disks. Only install safe, trusted software. Avoid shareware and freeware. These programs are known for containing Adware and Spyware. It is also a good policy not to install any Internet software unless required.

Spreading through the boot sectors

Some viruses cause boot sector corruption in disks. Infected disks can be spread by other disks scanning them. Boot sector viruses run automatically after the disk has been inserted or connected to the hard drive.

III. Many of us have heard horror stories about viruses that compromised mission-critical company data. These viruses cost companies many months to recover, and thousands of dollars and hours to restore the information. The final result was that many hours, costs, as well profits, remain unaccounted. Sometimes, companies don't recover fully after a disaster. You can save your business with simple precautions

Anti-virus software

Another option is running an antivirus program locally. Many antivirus software offers live updates that allow you to download the most current virus definitions as soon as they become available. This is a great way to make sure you are up-to-date every week, if not daily. It is important to choose the right antivirus program. It can be more damaging to your network performance to install a PC virus than a virus on your computer at work. Norton has a company edition that's specifically made for Windows NT Servers. If you use antivirus software on a computer network, make sure it does not scan partitions or drives that are connected to the network. You should only scan your local system, and then turn off the auto protection. The auto-protect continually scans your network traffic and causes network problems. This setting is typically disabled by default in corporate editions. PC editions do not.

Email Clients

Don't open emails from unknown senders. A website is used to facilitate ecommerce transactions and/or act as a virtual card. Make sure the emails have a pre-set subject. Make sure you specify from whom the email is being sent if it is sent by server side design. Common sense is a good rule of thumb when reading your email. Unsolicited email attachments should be discarded. This is the way most MM worms spread.

You can disable preview panes within email clients. Outlook Express and Outlook Express include a feature that lets you preview the message before it is sent. This is a critical security flaw. It will instantly spread a virus to any email that is infected.

It is also a smart idea to turn off any feature that allows the client view HTML-formatted emails. These viruses and other worms are usually eliminated by the html function. The attached file is then run within the email head.