Fast forward ten years and you might find the Internet has become an even more dangerous place than it currently is. Research into the future of viruses and malware has always underestimated just how bad things could get. Take this document from IBM for example: http://www.research.ibm.com/antivirus/SciPapers/Chess/Future.html at the time, IBM tried to predict how viruses would evolve during the start of the 21st century and had some interesting ideas.
Nowadays, the Internet is riddled with malware infected web pages and viruses have taken on a completely new form to what they used to be. Ten years ago, a virus would have a visible purpose on a computer and it wouldn’t be hard to tell you were infected. Nowadays, viruses and malware can stay dormant on a system for days, weeks and even months without having any visible presence to the end user. In reality, it can be doing a lot of malicious activities in the background which may or may not directly affect the user.
Browser redirect viruses are now very common and play a big part in the computer virus activity that takes place in the world today. Hackers and virus creators soon realised that the Internet was very big business indeed, and being able to manipulate search results on a huge scale meant big money for them. These types of viruses can be tricky to remove and can end up staying resident on the victims computer for a long time. Guides such as this one here http://www.removingmalware.org/google-redirect-virus-removal-guaranteed/ explain what these types of virus do and how to remove them, but there is often a lot of variation in the types of virus so a case by case basis is usually required.
It is clear that anti-malware software has to be much more effective at what it does. Currently there is a huge gap in the market for a truly effective anti-malware solution that has an almost perfect detection rate. The constant battle between virus creators and anti-malware vendors is apparent though. The authors of these viruses and malware are forever evolving their techniques at hiding from the operating system and ensuring they are not being detected. No anti-malware software is capable of guaranteeing 100% detection rates simply because there is so much involved in classifying what is malware activity and what is not.
Ultimately, the definition databases that anti-malware software relies upon is ultimately a flawed system that forever relies upon the vendors and community to report new malware strings and keep everyone updated. This means properly written 0-day malware is almost guaranteed to infect any machine of its choice, regardless of what protection they may be using.
Nowadays, the Internet is riddled with malware infected web pages and viruses have taken on a completely new form to what they used to be. Ten years ago, a virus would have a visible purpose on a computer and it wouldn’t be hard to tell you were infected. Nowadays, viruses and malware can stay dormant on a system for days, weeks and even months without having any visible presence to the end user. In reality, it can be doing a lot of malicious activities in the background which may or may not directly affect the user.
Browser redirect viruses are now very common and play a big part in the computer virus activity that takes place in the world today. Hackers and virus creators soon realised that the Internet was very big business indeed, and being able to manipulate search results on a huge scale meant big money for them. These types of viruses can be tricky to remove and can end up staying resident on the victims computer for a long time. Guides such as this one here http://www.removingmalware.org/google-redirect-virus-removal-guaranteed/ explain what these types of virus do and how to remove them, but there is often a lot of variation in the types of virus so a case by case basis is usually required.
It is clear that anti-malware software has to be much more effective at what it does. Currently there is a huge gap in the market for a truly effective anti-malware solution that has an almost perfect detection rate. The constant battle between virus creators and anti-malware vendors is apparent though. The authors of these viruses and malware are forever evolving their techniques at hiding from the operating system and ensuring they are not being detected. No anti-malware software is capable of guaranteeing 100% detection rates simply because there is so much involved in classifying what is malware activity and what is not.
Ultimately, the definition databases that anti-malware software relies upon is ultimately a flawed system that forever relies upon the vendors and community to report new malware strings and keep everyone updated. This means properly written 0-day malware is almost guaranteed to infect any machine of its choice, regardless of what protection they may be using.