2005: the year the virus gets nasty

Next year will see more and more viruses targeting users' financial accounts as organised crime moves online in a big way, according to security company Sophos.

Although Sophos found that half of this year's top viruses, i.e. Netsky and its variants, came from a teenager in northern Germany, 2005 will see more and more viruses that collect and forward online banking details.

Organised criminal gangs in eastern Europe and the Far East are hiring professional programmers to harvest these details and use them to drain funds from bank accounts worldwide.

"There will be a greater move towards the commercial side of malware," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

"Viruses have turned nasty this year, with attempts to get financial gains. Virus writing has gone from being a juvenile activity to something done by hard businessmen after money."

At the same time the amount of new viruses is such that updating antivirus protection should now be done daily, not weekly or monthly. Most antivirus vendors have daily updates and some recommend checking more frequently than that.

By far the biggest problem is the Windows operating system, according to Cluley. Regular patching is essential and there are too many homes and businesses still getting hit by worms exploiting unpatched flaws.

But the biggest security risk is still the user. Viruses that spread via attachments and require a user to open them are still in the primacy, and system administrators could save themselves a lot of hassle simply by blocking emails with executable code at the firewall.

The big 'no show' of the year was the mobile virus. Although proof of concept code was released buy Russian hacking group 29A, there have been no reports of widespread infection.

"What is absent is victims of mobile phone viruses," explained Cluley. "There is a danger that people will be so distracted by the low threat of mobile viruses that they don't pay attention to the real problem: Windows PCs."