For six days in July The Internet was a hackers paradise

At 1.15pm on Friday 25 July the avecho anti virus engine stopped an unknown virus. GlassWall does not rely upon virus definitions, and so did not know what the virus was, it just sent the intended recipient a message to inform them that a malicious email had been blocked. For the next six days GlassWall continued to stop hundreds of unknown viruses all similar, but many were variations on a theme. Anyone protected by traditional detection techniques were at the mercy of the virus as they had no knowledge of it.

(PRWEB) August 6, 2003 -- At 1.15pm on Friday 25 July the avecho anti virus engine stopped an unknown virus. GlassWall does not rely upon virus definitions, and so did not know what the virus was, it just sent the intended recipient a message to inform them that a malicious email had been blocked. For the next six days GlassWall continued to stop hundreds of unknown viruses all similar, but many were variations on a theme.

On the Friday 1 August the anti-virus vendors finally trapped this virus and named it W32/Mimail.A - but the damage was already done. W32/Mimail had been proliferating across the internet for six days before the detection companies finally recognised it. The virus writer had been developing and testing variants for nearly a week before being discovered
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In all probability the companies the hacker had really targeted had already been infected and the damage done. Once activated the virus accesses a website and downloads the payload. The website no longer exists but only had to be running when the target companies were infected. Once the spyware was downloaded into the companies networks all the hacker needed to do was tear down the website and he was home free.

Over the six days the Mimail.A hacker was testing his virus on the internet, infecting thousands of systems, those system owners were spending a total of $10 million dollars a day on traditional anti virus software. The IT world spent over $60 million between the Friday 25 July and Friday 1 August. The first protection they were offered from the Mimail.A virus was 12.38pm on the Friday 1 August. The companies targeted by the Mimail.A hacker were already infected and in all likelihood the spyware is installed and they still dont know its there.

Meanwhile four days after the IT security world finally woke up to the Mimail.A virus administrator discussion groups are in meltdown as networks are in turmoil over the spoof messages Mimail.A trails across the internet. Companies are still catching Mimail.A at an alarming rate and it will be weeks before this outbreak is finally contained.

We are lucky the virus was targeted and not generally malicious. The clean up cost for Mimail.A will be considerable but imagine if the payload had been destructive, with six days undetected proliferation Mimail.A could have brought many businesses to the brink.

Mimail.A should set the alarm bells ringing throughout the IT world.

avecho GlassWall caught every Mimail.A virus and was protecting systems a week before any other av technology was even aware of the problem.

Mimail.A passed through Scanners, heuristics, AI as if they werent there, using just basic techniques to avoid detection.

If we learn anything from this debacle it is you are not safe with current anti-virus software: The internet is a hackers paradise and they are still setting the agenda. Users need to stop accepting the status quo and ask "what are we paying for?"