2002: Another Year of the Virus?

If 2001 can reasonably be called The Year of the Virus, then 2002 looks set to be The Year of the Virus (Part II): The Revenge of the Virus-writer.

Many column inches (and many adverts) have been devoted to the precautions you can take to secure your systems.

But the nasty hackers and malware writers keep coming up with new ways to wreak their particular form of havoc.

And that will undoubtedly continue into 2002 - unless the end user community takes matters into its own hands.

We at silicon.com (among many others) have said over and over again that ISPs should do more to stop the spread of certain viruses and worms, and that the anti-virus vendors themselves should keep their eye on the ball, stop arguing with each other and simply get on with the job of ensuring their customers get the latest upgrades as soon as possible.

Microsoft too has come in for heavy criticism for repeatedly failing to release secure software and for being slow to react to newly discovered holes in its software. Even XP, supposedly the most bulletproof product it has ever made, had holes in it so large you could drive a proverbial (if virtual) bus through it.

The industry has been calling for improvements in these areas for years, but still nothing has happened.

So sadly, it's now up to the end user to take responsibility.

If we are to confound the dire predictions of 2002 becoming riddled with worms, viruses, Trojans and the like, we must ensure our AV software is up-to-date by checking weekly (if not daily) that there are no new threats out there.

All Microsoft users must visit Microsoft's website weekly (if not daily) to ensure no new patches have been released.

If you can't be bothered with all that, then try checking trusted news services (such as silicon.com, if you'll pardon the shameless plug) to ensure all is quiet on the virus front (we'll certainly let you know if there is something dangerous out there).

Otherwise we'll see even more problems this year than last. If you aren't convinced of the scale of the problem, consider this: AV specialist MessageLabs recorded more viruses in December 2001 than it did in the whole of 2000. Even allowing for the growth of the company itself, that's a chilling statistic.

So let's try to ensure we're not saying the same sort of thing about December 2002 next year. It's time for end users to take ultimate control. It may not be right, but it may be the only chance we have of fending off the virus threat.