There's an Internet war raging, and the spoils are virus-infected computers.
The Internet has become a cornucopia of riches for hackers and tech-savvy spammers trying to exploit the "backdoor" installed in more than half a million computers infected by last month's MyDoom virus, experts said Thursday. While many of those PCs have been cleansed of the malicious code, tens of thousands of others remain ripe for the picking.
Security firm iDefense Inc. has identified a half dozen separate viruses searching the web for MyDoom-infected computers.
"There are a lot of attackers out there attempting to hijack these computers and take ownership of them," Ken Dunham, director of malicious code for iDefense, said. "There's a flurry of activity in the underground."
The new viruses attempt to enter computers through the same hole created by MyDoom, remove the original virus, close the opening and install their own program allowing a hacker or spammer to commandeer the machine.
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
