yamauchi@heron.cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) (09/18/90)
Has anyone done any work on measuring the degree to which viruses (as a whole or as individual strains) have spread throughout the population of personal computers? This could be done either by collecting statistics on the number of reported cases or, more elaborately, sending out surveys to various sites (academic/commercial/government) and individual users (e.g. subscribers to various magazines). There is a tendency among naive users to blame every occurence of unusual system behavior on "a virus". I'm curious to what extent this is a reasonable response to the current level of virus infestation and to what extent this is just paranoia (or perhaps hypochondria). It would be interesting to track the growth in the number, type, and capabilities of viruses as a function of time. I can remember listening to a talk on viruses as an undergrad (circa 1985) in which viruses were basically academic curiousities as *potential* future threats to security -- for better or for worse, we've come a long way in a short time... _______________________________________________________________________________ Brian Yamauchi University of Rochester yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu Computer Science Department _______________________________________________________________________________
ropg@ooc.uva.nl (Rop Gonggrijp) (09/18/90)
yamauchi@heron.cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes: >Has anyone done any work on measuring the degree to which viruses (as >a whole or as individual strains) have spread throughout the >population of personal computers? This could be done either by >collecting statistics on the number of reported cases or, more >elaborately, sending out surveys to various sites >(academic/commercial/government) and individual users (e.g. >subscribers to various magazines). I know of a case where the speed virus propagation was measured. The virus we now call 'The Internet Worm' and the researcher was Robert T. Morris [Jr.]. (Yeah, I know, it was a worm and not a virus). Whether you like it or not, the best way to measure propagation is by letting out a relatively harmless 'test virus'