Windows malware count 4500 in first six months
 

Nearly 4500 worms and viruses which affect the Windows operating system have been documented between January and June this year by security services and anti-virus vendor Symantec in its six-monthly Internet Security Threat Report.

This was nearly 450 percent higher than for the corresponding period in 2003, John Donovan, managing director for Symantec Australia and New Zealand, said.

He put this down to an increase in the number of variants emerging as the writers of malicious code seemed to need less and less time to tweak their code to produce variants.

The report also found that the lead time between the disclosure of a vulnerability and the creation of an exploit had fallen to around six days.

Donovan said that, given the fact that most organisations took between 30 and 60 days to patch their software, this increased their exposure to a large extent and epmhasised the need for early warning systems to be in place.

The report said Symantec had documented 1237 new vulnerabilities during the six month period, which meant 48 each week. Nearly three-quarters were considered easy to exploit, and 96 per cent were considered moderately or highly severe.



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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...?oneclick=true

Every newbie in the world is trying to create one... it's no longer about generating signups, it's about stealing them.

take my advice and get yourself some apple shares, 20% increase over the last 5 weeks ... almost 100% of the last 12 month.