Archive notice: This article was originally published on April 18, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The article first provides an overview of the development of IT threats, from the appearance of the first PC virus in the late 1980s to the emergence of mobile threats in the first decade of the 21st century. Emm vividly describes the development of antivirus solutions through the use of ever-new technologies and how they were able to keep pace with the rapid development of malicious code.
The security expert also focuses on the changed motivation of virus authors: while the first viruses were developed and distributed by so-called “script kiddies” purely out of “cybervandalism”, modern malware serves exclusively to enrich its authors illegally. This change is also confirmed by the decline in global epidemics observed since 2003. Since then, more and more Trojan programs have been developed purely to order, infiltrating a specific system and stealing users’ personal data.
The author pays particular attention to mobile threats: since the first worm for smartphones appeared in 2004, new malicious programs for mobile devices have emerged regularly. In just a few years, this type of malware has undergone a development that took PC malware a full 20 years.
The study’s conclusion: IT threats have changed radically in recent years. Effective protection is therefore more important for users today than ever before. Security solutions must cope with several hundred new threats every day within a very short time and must also be able to block new and unknown malware effectively without knowing its signature.
