CBL Serviços de Recuperação de Dados

Virus Center

In a recent report at http://www.cert.org/incident_notes/IN-2003-01.html on malicious code propagation and antivirus software update, the CERT® Coordination Center provided the following information:

"The speed at which viruses are spreading is increasing. This echoes the trend toward faster propagation rates seen in the past few years in self-propagating malicious code (i.e., worms). Beginning with the Code Red worm in 2001 up through the Slammer worm early in 2003, we have seen worm propagation times drop from hours to minutes.

A similar trend from weeks to hours has emerged in the virus (i.e., non-self-propagating malicious code) arena. The effectiveness of antivirus software suffers as a result. Several recent malicious code incidents involving variants of W32/BugBear and W32/Sobig have achieved widespread propagation at rates significantly faster than many previous viruses. This increased speed is, unfortunately, also faster than many antivirus signatures can be identified and updated, regardless of the update method (including automated signature updates).

In a number of the reports (CERT® has received), users who were compromised may have been under the incorrect impression that merely having antivirus software installed was enough to protect them from all malicious code attacks. This is simply a mistaken assumption, and users must always exercise caution when handling email attachments or other code or data from untrustworthy sources.

In general, it is important to remember that while antivirus software vendors continue to improve the speed and reliability of their signature update mechanisms, there will always be some window of time when a system does not contain signatures to detect a particular worm or virus..."

For your information, CBL has provided current virus information in the links below. Check here frequently for updates on virus activity.