Virus arms race primes malware numbers surge Half (52 per cent) of new malware strains only stick around for 24 hours or less. The prevalence of short lived variants reflects a tactic by miscreants aimed at overloading security firms so that more damaging strains of malware remain undetected for longer, according to a study by Panda Security. The security firm, based in …
...malware propagation rates start to exceed the rate by which they can be scanned? I'm surprised writers haven't taken more pages from amoebae and tried things like "code conjugation" in which two different strains detect each other and swap code pieces, thus turning themselves into two new, unknown strains instantly and without any human intervention. If new strains can be created without human intervention, then it's probably safe to say the malware war will be well and truly lost--nature itself shows how resilient such things as insects, amoebae, and bacteria have been despite eons of antagonism and predation.
"We have to wait until we get hold of the malware they have created to be able to analyse, classify and combat it. In this race, vendors that work with traditional, manual analysis techniques are too slow to vaccinate clients, as the distribution and infection span is very short."
Maybe you should come up with a different plan then, and stop scaring users into installing your useless software!
If Panda's stats are anything like reliable (I tend to agree with the good Dr. Vesselin Bontchev that they may be a little massaged) then we're already at the stage where we need to consider that the current AV approach is ready for the bin
Currently companies are trying to catalog 'baddies', this was fine in the 80s and 90s when the number of baddies was so small, it got progressively worse to the point we are at today when thousands of new baddies appear a day. I already need to upgrade my PC just to keep up to date with the new anti virus (same OS), and I know I'm not the only person who unplugs his network cable and disables the AV during certain operations just so I can remember the day when a few gigahertz was an impressive speed
We need some sort of quantum shift in behavioural scanners and firewalls but something capable of warning in english instead of the usual "[neverheardofit.dll] is accessing IP [havent.got.a.clue] using port [who cares]" type of messages which my mum (and subsequently me) really appreciate
When I read Panda's terror message I don't think "Oooh Oooh I must buy Panda" I think they are admitting their impending doom
If this trend continues, there will come a time when the amount of malware is so large, that anti-malware filters will need more power than the systems they are protecting are able to provide.
At this time, those systems will become essentially worthless, and unusable.
You can choose to leave now, or later. But you cannot choose to stay...
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