Virus Report Claims 56-Day Vulnerability in '05

Nov 30, 2005: A new report from security seller claims that 2005 saw nearly two months in which end users were unprotected from a range of virii.p>

California-based Ironport - a manufacturer of security hardware - is telling the world that software solutions are not up to the job of protecting businesses from viral attacks. The report targets major vendors such as Sophos, Symantec, McAfee and Kaspersky Labs. An element of "they would say that, wouldn't they?" is obviously in play.

The report concentrates on mass-mailing viruses such as Sober, which the company claims saw software updates appearing 'on average' 16 hours and 14 minutes after the initial attacks occurred. Similar figures are piled onto each other to reach the 56-day total.

What the report leaves out, however, is the fact that most anti-virus software now uses inbuilt heuristics rather than simply software patches to identify new threats, many of which are based on the same code.

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