Reducing confusion during malware outbreaks

In early February, anti-virus firms warned customers about a computer virus programmed to delete files on the third of each month, but almost every company called the program by a different name.A month later, the companies still use a hodge-podge of monikers for the program: Blackmal, Nyxem, MyWife, KamaSutra, Blackworm, Tearec and Worm_Grew all describe the same mass-mailing computer virus.

"Consumers and customers don't always know which threat to be worried about," said Dan Nadir, vice president of product strategy for network-protection firm ScanSafe. "We had a problem that a person would say, 'I know about MyWife, but what about this new threat, KamaSutra?'". "That confusion is a big issue."
While the virus-of-many-names episode highlighted the continuing issues for the average internet user, the incident became the first success - albeit a moderate one - for an effort to create a single identifier among responders for common threats. While consumers may have scratched their heads about which threat to be worried about, incident response teams and information-technology managers had a single name for the attack, CME-24.

The designation comes from the Common Malware Enumeration (CME) Project, an initiative spearheaded by federal contractor MITRE Corp. The project does not intend to solve the naming problem for consumers, but to provide a neutral common identifier that incident responders can use.It provides single, common identifiers to new virus threats to reduce public confusions during malware outbreaks. CME is not an attempt to replace the vendor names currently used for viruses and other forms of malware, but instead aims to facilitate the adoption of a shared, neutral indexing capability for malware.

Visit the website HERE.