By Felicity Ussher, 8 September 1999 14:09
NEWS Computer security experts, ICSA, are making the first attempt to automate the way viruses are detected on the Web. The current authority on active viruses is "In the Wild", a monthly list maintained by Israel's iRiS Software. It is co-ordinated by one man, Joe Wells, and relies on manual contributions from around 70 people worldwide. "In the Wild" currently lists 153 known viruses. But ICSA's director of malicious code, Roger Thompson, said an automated system would vastly boost the number. He told Silicon.com: "We use a network of tens of thousands of PCs to generate a sample, so we can make accurate estimates of how dangerous a virus is. Our software works out how many attacks a virus has made, and calculates the financial cost." Thompson said manual lists were insufficient because people tended to only report unusual viruses. ICSA's TruSecure system has been in beta for two months and is due to roll out by the end of the year.
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