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Good news on the virus front!
Things are quiet right now.
Bad news on the virus front! A destructive piece of software could be racing across the world towards your computer system right now and you may be powerless to prevent it.
Like the real world, the robbers are usually one step ahead of the cops, except that in the case of viruses, the robbers usually have little more to gain that a twisted satisfaction in a bad job well done. The hard reality is that any system that is open to the ‘outside world’ is open to a virus, if its operators have the bad luck to be among the first targets of an attack. In the case of sophisticated viruses, the criminal who released it has devised a way to get destructive information into computer systems before security specialists imagined it could even be done, let alone figured out a way to prevent it.
Last year, even while systems administrators world-wide were taking a break from the rush to prepare for Y2K, the “Melissa” and “I Love You” viruses struck. There are estimates that the “I Love You” virus alone could have caused as much as $12 billion in damage.
There is no way of knowing how many virus writers are out there at this moment, preparing the ‘worms’, ‘Trojan horses’ and other strange animals that threaten the world’s public and private computer networks. The source of a deadly new virus could be anyone, from a gifted teenager like Montreal’s MafiaBoy to a sovereign government somewhere in the world, waging a new kind of war.
We do know that once the existence of a new virus is confirmed, an informal but elite global community of no more than 20 people around the world springs into action. Whether they are paid by governments or private companies, they have collectively set themselves a time of 18 hours to assess, label and tag a new virus. (After a hellish week in which 12,000 new viruses appeared, generated by software that acted like a kind of virus ‘factory’, the group stopped taking the time and trouble to find out what a new virus actually does, but concentrates on generating and distributing effective filters.)
Virus prevention unfortunately almost always means that someone, somewhere, has been successfully attacked. There are some indications, however, that the basic virus prevention message is starting to get through. Recently, the “Lopez Worm” arrived in many mailboxes, promising a revealing look at pop star Jennifer Lopez, and much to system administrators’ relief, most recipients refused to fall for the bait. (They may have been ‘vaccinated’ against that particular trick by the relative success of the “Anna Kournikova Worm” which successfully embarrassed many computer users who clicked on a suggestively packaged attachment, only to crash their mail systems.)
There is no such thing as 100 per cent safety on the Internet. The people who own and operate each network are forced to balance the utility of the network against its security, trading vulnerability off against capability.
There is no such thing as deterrence against a threat that can take any form and arrive from anywhere. Interpol tells us that more than 30,000 Web sites offer detailed hacking instructions and even software that allows even less sophisticated users to wreak havoc on unprotected systems.
There are already 100 million devices attached to the Internet and still growing fast. Companies are making big investments in mobile e-commerce, often well in advance of the systems needed to protect them. Viruses have the potential to slow or halt some initiatives completely and will certainly drive up the costs of those that are implemented.
We are all already paying for viruses, through the security measures we are forced to implement. Today, interdependency is more than a word. We are inextricably linked to our customers and to our suppliers, to our transportation, financial and regulatory systems. Failure to deal with viruses by any one organization will inevitably have an impact on many others. We owe each other the best possible preventive measures but recognizing the limits of prevention, we also need to back up our data and be sure it is backed up successfully.
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Voices from the sky
After five satellite launches, four years of preparation, and three billion dollars, a new kind of radio is about to begin broadcasting across North America. This fall, two competing companies will begin beaming dozens of digital radio channels from satellite directly to special radios, typically installed in customers’ automobiles and trucks. Subscribers will be able to drive coast-to-coast without ever touching that dial.
That’s right, subscribers. Sirius Satellite Radio will charge $12.95 a month for service, while XM Satellite has chosen a slightly different business model, asking only $9.95 a month but inserting three minutes of advertising into each hour of programming.
Profits from the new services could be higher than the satellites they broadcast from. Nearly one minute in four on commercial radio is devoted to commercials. There are more than 200 million cars on North American roads today, a number that increases by more than 15 million each year. People spend a lot of time in their cars and they spend a lot of time listening to the radio.
Satellite radio is receiving some help getting off the ground, because this fall, the radios in many new automobiles will be equipped to receive satellite signals. It’s a safe bet this service will take off.
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