Viruses: Back with a vengeance in 2004

Robert Vamosi AnchorDesk

Published: 05 Jan 2004 11:10 GMT

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When the MiMail.l email virus appeared last month, it got little attention from the media. After all, it was only a minor variant of the MiMail family, and spread slowly across the Internet, right? Well, it may not have been the most destructive worm ever, but it turns out that MiMail virtually shut down The Spamhaus Project and SpamCop, two sites where you can report spam abuses.

2003 was supposed to be the year to end email-borne viruses, given that both MS Outlook and antivirus applications have become much better at stopping them. But in 2004, I expect to see more of these pests, especially more spam-related ones like MiMail.l, as professional spammers continue using them both to collect email addresses and to distribute their messages anonymously.

MiMail.l wasn't the first worm to be associated with junk email. As early as January 2003, antivirus experts noticed a worm called Sobig was aiding the sending of spam. By early summer of 2003, there was evidence that Sobig was building a network of what are called open proxies, which are systems that act as blind intermediary portals to the Internet.

By the time the Sobig.f variant came along in mid-August, the open-proxy network created by earlier variants helped Sobig.f infect over one million PCs worldwide in less than 24 hours, making it the fastest spreading computer virus or worm on record. The August infection further expanded the open-proxy network, giving future variants the ability to spread even faster.

Lists of these open proxies are quite valuable, and are bought and sold in chat rooms and elsewhere on the Net. This is largely because open proxies allow individuals to access the Internet through a remote system's IP address. For professional spammers, this sort of anonymous Net access is a must. It makes it difficult for law enforcement to track the vast quantities of messages spammers send back to their sources.

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