Computer viruses are spreading faster and causing more damage, according to a report by Symantec Corp, a security-software maker.
"Corporations and individual computer users need to act quickly to apply patches to the vulnerabilities in their computers, as attack times are getting shorter," Rosa Shih (
Blended virus attacks -- in which a virus infects a computer, replicates and uses information on the computer to spread itself -- constituted 54 percent of all attacks in the second half of last year, the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report said. Other viruses may infect a computer via an e-mail attachment or Web site but do not spread automatically after affecting the operations of the computer.
The report also detailed the appearance of three new worms -- Blaster, Welchia and Sobig.F -- which infected millions of computers and resulted in as much as US$2 billion in damages worldwide.
"In the near term, virus attacks may be launched before companies can provide patches or even defect announcements," Shih warned.
In the report, the company said it found 2,636 new vulnerabilities in computer software in the second half of last year and that the number of viruses that could steal confidential data had increased by 519 percent over the first half of the year.
More viruses originate from the US than anywhere else, followed by Canada and China, the report said. But the number of Taiwanese virus-writers increased during the period, making the country the eighth-largest origin of virus attacks, up from the 12th in the first half of last year.
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