The strange decline of computer worms

It sounds like some people think the worm problem is going away, or at least changing dramatically. At the 2005 WebSec conference, Mikko Hyppönen, from F-Secure, gave his perspective in a panel on Tuesday.

Mikko Hyppönen, director of anti-virus research at F-Secure, said that with the single exception of the Santy worm (which targeted vulnerable PHP installations) little new has been seen of computer worms since the May 2004 outbreak of Sasser. The hiatus follows a string of high-profile worm outbreaks including Blaster, Nimda, Slammer, Welchi and Code Red over recent years. The decrease in computer worms noted by F-Secure ironically comes at the same time many vendors, such as HP, Cisco, Check Point and others, are aggressively marketing worm-throttling technology.

Source: The strange decline of computer worms, by John Leyden, from Thursday 17th March 2005.

This sounds more like marketing and media spin to me. After all, various people concluded that 2004 was one of the most dramatic years for the worm yet. This problem doesn't go away overnight. Looking at it another way, malware authors are getting stealthy, and their tecyniques are changing. So, the conclusion that the worm problem is going away seems premature. More people are concerned about the IM worm problem than before based on recent activity, and mass mailers are just as popular as they've ever been.