Malicious Mobile Code

Why Another Book on Viruses?

Why write another book on viruses? First, I could not find a good information source covering all the new types of viruses and Trojans. There are dozens of antivirus computer books out on the market today, but most are centered around DOS viruses running on DOS-based computers. Only a few give passing treatment to macro viruses, Windows viruses, and rogue Internet code. Even most of the computer virus Internet FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) documents haven’t been updated in years. Many of the research whitepapers listed on antivirus sites are several years old. Sure, there are still lots of DOS-only machines operating, but the world is, and has been, dominated by Microsoft Windows and the Internet. Today, the Internet is everything and the threat of malicious mobile code is dominated by macro viruses, email-piggybacking Trojans, and mischievous web-based scripting languages. Malicious Mobile Code (MMC) is a new term coined to group all the different types of harmful, self-replicating programs. The future of personal computer security starts with understanding what malicious code can and can’t do. Searching the Internet, I found lots of short papers and sites dedicated to a particular topic, such as Java threats or macro viruses, but no one source to cohesively pull all the threats together.

Second, all antivirus books and papers recommend end-user education and a current antivirus scanner as the best ways to prevent malicious mobile code. That is flawed advice and it has never worked. Most users don’t pay attention to antivirus advice, and they shouldn’t have to. And everyone already knows that even the best antivirus scanners excel at catching historic viruses, not new ones. The latest worm or virus ends up working its way around the world ever faster. But ask any antivirus researcher what they do to protect their own machine and they will list file deletions, registry edits, and system changes -- all made to prevent malicious code from being able to work in the first place. These defenses need to be shared with everyone. In short, this is the book I was looking for.