Name that worm--plan looks to cut through chaos

Iria · Sep 22, 2005, 08:51 PM

Zotob.E, Tpbot-A, Rbot.CBQ and IRCbot.worm: all names given to a single worm that wreaked havoc in Windows 2000 systems last month. Among the plethora of identifiers, perhaps the most useful--CME-540--didn't make an impact.

But that's about to change. CME-540 was the tag attached to the worm by the Common Malware Enumeration initiative, which is just emerging from its test phase. Next month, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team plans to officially take the wraps off the effort, meant to reduce the confusion caused by the different names security companies give worms, viruses and other pests.

The project assigns a unique identifier to a particular piece of malicious software. When included in security software, in alerts and in virus encyclopedia entries, this identifier should help people determine which pest is hitting their systems and whether they are protected, the initiative's backers said.

"There is a lot of confusion over the way that malware is referred to," Desiree Beck, the technical lead for the CME initiative, said in an interview. "We're trying to alleviate that by giving malware a common identifier, so everybody is talking about the same thing when some malware event happens."
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Read More / Source: News.com

Sep 22, 2005, 08:51 PM	#1
Iria DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 7,275 Rep Power: 89	Name that worm--plan looks to cut through chaos Zotob.E, Tpbot-A, Rbot.CBQ and IRCbot.worm: all names given to a single worm that wreaked havoc in Windows 2000 systems last month. Among the plethora of identifiers, perhaps the most useful--CME-540--didn't make an impact. But that's about to change. CME-540 was the tag attached to the worm by the Common Malware Enumeration initiative, which is just emerging from its test phase. Next month, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team plans to officially take the wraps off the effort, meant to reduce the confusion caused by the different names security companies give worms, viruses and other pests. The project assigns a unique identifier to a particular piece of malicious software. When included in security software, in alerts and in virus encyclopedia entries, this identifier should help people determine which pest is hitting their systems and whether they are protected, the initiative's backers said. "There is a lot of confusion over the way that malware is referred to," Desiree Beck, the technical lead for the CME initiative, said in an interview. "We're trying to alleviate that by giving malware a common identifier, so everybody is talking about the same thing when some malware event happens." __________ Read More / Source: News.com