* What caused you the worst headache in 2003?
As the New Year approaches, corporate network managers will likely remember 2003 for its record-breaking volumes of spam and havoc-wreaking viruses such as Sobig. Unfortunately, most industry observers expect Internet threats to worsen in 2004, and they say there’s little that ISPs can do to stop these threats.
In the last 12 months, network executives have become inundated with spam. During the summer, spam volumes reached 50% of e-mail traffic on the Internet for the first time, according to several independent industry estimates. By November 2003, anti-spam vendor Brightmail estimated that spam represented 56% of total Internet mail, up from 41% in December 2002.
Spam volumes will grow to more than 70% of Internet e-mail by April 2004, predicts MessageLabs, a U.K. provider of managed e-mail security services. MessageLabs estimates that two-thirds of all spam is being sent by computers that were hijacked by viruses such as Sobig and MiMail variants.
Meanwhile, virus attacks have become more vicious. In August, the e-mail borne Sobig.F variant became the biggest and fastest-spreading e-mail virus on record. For example, MessageLabs stopped 1 million copies of Sobig.F in a 24-hour period. At its worst, Sobig.F was responsible for nearly three-quarters of all Internet e-mail traffic.
Indeed, U.K. consultancy MI2g Intelligence Unit estimates that the Sobig virus caused $36.4 billion in damage worldwide, the “greatest amount that has ever been attributed to a single virus family,” according to MI2g.
Three other viruses were released in August, causing anti-virus vendors to dub August 2003 as the worst month ever in the history of Internet viruses. Other high-profile viruses that hit corporate networks that month include the Blaster worm, the Back Door Trojan horse and the Dumaru worm.
Industry experts predict viruses and worms are going to be larger, more sophisticated and more likely to be sent by spammers in 2004. This combination of viruses and spam as in the Sobig attacks will create bigger headaches for ISPs and corporate network managers in the year ahead, they say.
“It’s the convergence between viruses and spam that’s highly topical,” says Mark Sunners, CTO at MessageLabs. “Everyone is seeing the exponential growth of spam over the last few months. But what’s lesser known is that it’s actually viruses that are behind a huge amount of that spam. Spammers are turning to viral techniques to harvest machines.”
Industry analysts predict few breakthroughs in anti-virus and anti-spam offerings from ISPs in 2004.
“ISPs are very cognizant of these threats, and they certainly don’t want to be held liable,” says Brownlee Thomas, telecom industry analyst with Giga Information Group. “But the real problem is not the ISP. The real problem is that Microsoft Outlook is so dominant and so vulnerable.”
Thomas predicts ISPs will offer more bundled anti-spam and anti-virus offerings for small businesses and consumers. She also expects to see ISPs introduce more security services – particularly against distributed denial of service attacks -for their Web hosting clients. However, Thomas says corporate network managers will need to continue cobbling together their own anti-virus and anti-spam solutions using third-party software packages.
“When I buy Internet service from AT&T, I expect it to be secure,” Thomas says. “There’s already some protection built into the product offering. But the onus is really on the corporate IT group to take additional measures.”
MI2g predicts that in 2004 more ISPs will offer Internet services that include virus detection, spam filtering, firewall coverage, intrusion detection and authentication. As an example, MI2g points to MessageLab’s managed anti-spam and anti-virus services, which are used by The Bank of New York, StorageTek and Conde Nast Publications. These kinds of services – also offered by Postini and FrontBridge – may lead to “safer and more secure integrated online services in 2004,” MI2g predicts.
MessageLabs plans to add more ISPs to its reseller list in 2004. Already, the company offers its services through Cable & Wireless and MCI.
“The big carriers are now starting to turn to us or other filtering companies. I think they’ve recognized that – certainly with anti-virus and spam – the filters are incredibly dynamic. Rather than reinvent the wheel, they’re turning to companies like ourselves and bundling it in their services,” Sunners says. “Enterprises are going back to their ISPs and saying this should be filtered out at the source….The pressure now is finally being brought to bear on ISPs.”
Also next year, MessageLabs plans to add encryption services, content filtering mechanisms and real-time e-mail archives. “Anti-spam and anti-virus will remain a constant arms race,” Sunners says.
