Security measures may be virus carriers

NEWS Digital signatures, as a part of the public key infrastructure (PKI), can create a false sense of security between the sender and receiver as the signature makes the message appear secure. However, specialists have warned that encrypted viruses will be on the increase as soon as encrypted communication becomes more commonplace. Ian Walker, technical director at Entrust Technologies, said users see encrypted messages and their attachments as being secure because of the digital signature. Walker said: "Viruses will spread increasingly through the exchange of public keys because the message, or its attachment, comes in an encrypted form from a familiar sender which makes the user see it as a secure message. We have not seen any encrypted viruses yet, but it is easy to send these viruses because of the availability of the public keys." Nir Ganani, director at security vendor Finjan software, warned that scanning both at the desktop and gateway is vital. He said: "Because of the increase in encrypted communication, using protection against malicious code in both desktop and gateway levels - and even at the ISP level - is necessary." But Mikko Hypponen, research director at F-secure, said no company can afford to leave desktop virus scanners without regular updates: He said: "The only way you can do content scanning is at the desktop because that's the only place where you can read the encrypted messages. Otherwise there is little point in encrypting the message in a first place." The UK Electronic Communications Act - which gives legal authority to digital signatures - came into effect last June.