Illegal media carry dangerous viruses
Illegal media carry dangerous viruses
Illegal availability of free copyrighted software, movies and music on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are causing massive headaches for people trying to create defences against malicious viruses, according to Websense, Inc.
It is posing one of the biggest coporate security risks for 2004. Over the last 12 months, there has been an increase of over 1,100 P2P sites, which totals more than 235,000 pages.
There are also 130 unique P2P applications, such as KaZaA, Morpheus and Grokster. These applications carry enormous risks as they tunnel through port 80, along with other rogue protocols, often bypassing an organisation's firewall.
Port 80 is frequently left open for web traffic, and therefore, virus-infected or copyrighted files are able to infiltrate even the most well guarded perimeter defenses.
Graham Connolly, territory manager of Websense ANZ said: "Corporations need to alert, educated and protect their employees from potential network security risks caused by downloading files from P2P networks.
"Viruses may be embedded in unsuspicious pornography or as a free download, such as a movie or executable file. Although accessed quite innocently, the damage to the company can be devastating."
The temptation to download MP3 files and other media among P2P has had a massive impact on the security threat. More than five billion music files were downloaded from P2P networks last year, according to research from The Yankee Group.
More than five million video game downloads also occurred last year, according to game developer Trymedia.
Also, between 400,000 and 600,000 copies of movies are downloaded each day, according to consulting firm Vian, and approximately three million users download their favourite TV shows from KaZaa every day.
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