Steep rise in virus count and two major worm outbreaks define last half year
In the second half of the year the virus count continued to rise with alarming force increasing from 110,000 to approximately 150, 000 by the end of the year - an unprecedented figure in virus history. At the same time, however the trend towards mass assaults using network worms dropped significantly with only two major outbreaks, one in September, with the Zotob worm causing larger disruptions internationally and the second, a worm called Sober. Y flooding email systems in late November. Earlier this year, the Zafi. D worm also made the headlines.
In November, F-Secure detected the use of rootkit technology in the digital rights management software used by Sony. This resulted in a major international issue for the entertainment giant but also raised bigger issues for companies like Sony in the way they handle data security issues and build processes to deal with vulnerabilities.
2005 was also a year characterized by a spate of criminal phishing attempts either directly to on-line banking customers yielding high profits to the malware authors or by exploiting man-made and natural disasters.
2005 was also the year, which saw the number of mobile malware exceed the 100 mark - growing proof that the criminal bodies behind their creation are serious in their attempts to exploit this new arena.
In the meantime, F-Secure has continued to up the ante against the malware community with a number of award winning products in the last six months including F-Secure Internet Security 2006 and its first venture into hardware, the F-Secure Messaging Security Gateway™.