Opinion: Bugs will bite - if you let them

The good news is that there's only one piece of bad news. The threat from crackers is rising exponentially - a fact that has been demonstrated in spades by the recent chaos and devastation caused by the AnnaKournikiva virus.

But while the world reels at the killer infection, we should take a few steps back and a few moments to look at the nature of the cracking beast.

The cracking community is simultaneously growing in size and dumbing down in focus. While not so long ago it was populated in the main by skilled but unethical or socially dysfunctional anoraks, its ranks are today being swelled by people who don't know the difference between smurf attacks and small irritating blue plastic figures associated with hideous and terrible music.

The evil menace is extending its tentacles to encompass malicious morons who have no ideas or talent of their own. These so-called script kiddies amuse themselves by downloading pre-written applets and chucking them at systems. Becoming a cracker today is, at least in theory, as easy as pulling down malicious code from a website.

This is exactly what's happened with the AnnaKournikiva virus. Whoever was responsible for cobbling together this code knew much more about social engineering than software engineering. The virus was mashed together using a freely available off-the-shelf authoring kit known as Vbs Worms Generator 1.50b.

There was no black art associated with the coding, but the authors displayed a shrewd grasp of human nature when they decided to propagate the virus using a picture of the attractive Russian tennis star, Anna Kournikiva. They gambled that people would be too stupid and/or lecherous to ignore their common sense and open the attachment anyway. They gambled correctly.

We've all heard of the devastation caused by Melissa, Love Bug et al. We all know that we shouldn't run attachments from untrusted mails/take sweets from strangers/play leapfrog with a unicorn. But somewhere between this knowledge and its application in the real world falls a shadow of pure stupidity. The threat from the virus is spreading exponentially around the world. And it will not be the last.

The widespread and growing availability of programs like the Vbs Worms Generator means there will be plenty more where AnnaKournikiva came from - and the smart money says the viruses are going to get more complex and much nastier. The bottom line is that there is no such thing as security, just levels of insecurity.