Risk: Informational
Mass mailing viruses could be consigned to the dustbin of history if only anti-virus vendors were quicker off the mark.
Findings presented by security experts at the recent Virus Bulletin Conference in Chicago show that reducing the 'window of vulnerability' between the release of a virus and the availability of fixes could make email virus outbreaks a rarity. The window of vulnerability is the delay between the appearance of a new email-borne virus or worm, and the release of signatures by traditional anti-virus software vendors.
Research presented by Gabor Szappanos from Virus Buster shows that when a new mass-mailing virus emerges, it usually takes a few hours to gather enough momentum to result in an outbreak. If anti-virus vendors were able to reduce the window of vulnerability to three hours or less, mass-mailing viruses would have little, if any, impact. A separate study by Andreas Marx of AV-test.org showed that the average signature delay time has only been reduced from 12 to 10 hours during the past year. Taken together the studies demonstrate a gulf of seven to nine hours between the first appearance of mass mailers and the availability of fixes.
The findings are further evidence that signature-based anti-virus technologies alone no longer provide adequate protection against viral outbreaks. Consumers and businesses alike can get infected with fast-spreading viruses even when they regularly update signature-based anti-virus detection tools. According to a report published by IDC in August 2004, proactive virus detection techniques are expected to be increasingly adopted by organisations to combat the more complex, fast-spreading threats of the future. A variety of approaches to plugging the gaps left open by conventional AV scanners are emerging.
Email filtering firms, such as MessageLabs and Avecho, argue viruses should be filtered out from email traffic on the net before they get anywhere near corporate boundaries. Host-based intrusion prevention firms argue the opposite. Firms like Cisco, Prevx and others argue that malicious code should be thwarted at the desktop using various types of behaviour-blocking technologies. Vendors such as Cisco and McAfee have sought to apply behaviour blocking techniques as a supplement to conventional AV scanner software. Thus far this has been a corporate play. Prevx Home became the first host-based intrusion prevention product to be offered as a free download last month, following a model adopted by GRISoft and Spybot in the AV and anti-spyware markets, respectively.