2004 was marked by an explosion of new viruses, worms and Trojans, a proliferation of phishing attacks and the first mobile phone viruses, say anti-virus software vendors.
Brett Myroff, CEO of local Sophos distributor Netxactics, says Sophos detected 10 724 new viruses, worms and Trojan horses to date this year - a 51.8% increase over the previous year.
Myroff says the Netsky-P worm accounted for almost a quarter of all virus incidents reported to Sophos, making it the hardest hitting virus of 2004. The second most prevalent worm of the year, Zafi-B, was first seen in June, and has been spreading successfully ever since, with little sign of slowdown.
Kaspersky Lab says in its annual Malware Development Review that while 2004 has seen the development of malware continuing at an "unrelenting pace", it was not all bad news - there were also a significant number of arrests of malicious code writers.
The review says most of the malware this year was a development and refinement of code seen before but with some interesting new trends, for example the use of links in e-mails as an alternative to attached files.
"So far, e-mails containing links have not been treated with suspicion by recipients, many of whom are much more likely to follow a link than they are to double-click an attachment," says David Emm, Kaspersky Lab senior technology consultant. "In addition, this method effectively `skips over` the perimeter defences deployed at the Internet gateway by many enterprises."
He notes that a worrying trend is the commercialisation of the use of malware and the ever-increasing involvement of dangerous international criminal gangs. The use of Trojans to steal confidential data, launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and distribute spam e-mail has added a "further sinister dimension" to the problem, he says.
"It`s clear the computer underground has realised the potential for making money from their creations in a wired world."
This includes the use of `zombie` machines leased to the highest bidder as a platform for spam distribution, or the use of extortion, where the same `zombie` machines are used to launch a `demonstration` DDoS attacks on a victim as a way of extorting money from Web site owners.
F-Secure says in its Data Security Summary for 2004 that the beginning of the year saw a record number of new virus outbreaks. However, the situation stabilised from June.
F-Secure adds that 2004 also saw the number of known viruses passing the 100 000 mark and the release of the first real mobile phone viruses.
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