The Latest Threat: A Virus Made Just for You
a refinement to the technique could make automated analysis of malware nearly impossible ..... The makers of antivirus software regularly collect samples of malware and then use automated analysis to generate a collection of identifying characteristics, commonly called a signature. .... polymorphism—a technique for changing programs each time they are copied to a new machine ..... The database of malware maintained by Symantec includes about 19 million signatures. In its annual Internet Security Threat Report released earlier this year, Symantec stated that its automated analysis systems analyzed 403 million unique variants of malicious programs in 2011, a 41 percent increase from the 286 million analyzed in 2010. Without automation, this task would be much harder.
The devil has time on his hands, looks like. The fight between good and evil continues. This reminds me of This World dictators beating the protesters in their use of information technology. Like in
Burma several years back the authorities encouraged protesters to go out in the streets and take pictures and upload them online. Then they coldly downloaded them to identify and punish individual protesters.
