It seems like only yesterday the media was in a frenzy about the end of the world due to some computer virus or another, actually it was last week when some media organisations ran a story about the Rinbot worm. 

Rinbot is nothing special, like many worms these days it exploit a known vulnerability or two in order to propagate and generally go about it’s thing. It just so happens it uses a patched vulnerability in Symantec products as one of the three vulnerabilities it exploits. Symantec themselves only rate Rinbot as a low risk piece of malware, so what did it do to deserve this hype. Probably nothing, it seems Thursday and Friday where slow news days.

But has anything really changed in the last 15 years, well actually not really. Back in March 1992 the media was in a frenzy again, this time about a 'super bug' called Michelangelo. The press at the time hyped this simple boot sector virus in to something like the end of the world.

The virus was set to trigger on March 6th, the birth date of it’s name sake, at which point it would proceed to overwrite sections of the hard disk with nulls. The press and experts ran with the premise that thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of machines had been infected with the virus. In reality the number probably was more like hundreds, and after the event reported losses as a result of the virus where limited. At the time it was claimed the virus could lay dormant for years, but as we all know now this was plainly not the case.

These two instances are not the only ones alas, you can bet at least once a year there will be one maybe two instances of the end of the world by computer virus. Another classic instance is the emergence of the 'Love-Bug' worm in May 2000. There is no arguing it was a pretty major malware incident, but some of the press really did over play it. One classic example of this was from a wire piece from the The Observer (Guardian Newspapers) in the UK.

"Just by clicking on your "Get Mail" you could have turned your PC into a pile of useless plastic. It is every computer user's worst nightmare _ and it's coming soon to a screen near you. Brace yourself for the supervirus."

Anyone who works in IT would know that this simply isn’t the case. But yet the press are still encouraged to print these wildly inaccurate claims.

Then like now every now and then there will be a frenzy of media interest about some virus, worm, or whatever. Somehow the press will get hold of the glimmer of the story they pump it up with some sound bites from vendors and organisations and for a day or to it will be considered the end of the world.

Who is at fault, well after the Michelangelo incident many anti-virus companies where left with egg on their faces for playing up the hype. However these days each of the major anti-virus companies have their own little part in the hype. But other security professionals will get in on the hype too, many seem to only have a passing knowledge of computer malware. Also many times other organisations play their part in the hype, including government.

So what can we do to reduce the FUD, well probably very little. But we can try by not feeding the trolls as many forum moderators will tell you for fanning the flames of a flame war. If you work in IT Security and someone asks you to comment for a news story, keep it simple and try not make it sound too scary. There are things that are more scary in IT Security and alas this kind of hype detracts from these more important issues

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