2001 PDT Computer viruses are often illegal immigrants of the worst kind, e-mailed anarchists that, unbound by international treaties or domestic laws, can sneak across borders easily and infect machines around the world in a matter of minutes. Given the global nature and effect of computer viruses, many experts believe that only an international partnership among security companies and law enforcement agencies would have any hope of stopping the ever-increasing threat of geopolitically disinterested viruses. Wired News delivered to your inbox or hand-held device. Everybody's got issues in Politics Infostructure strengthens your backbone Security experts were excited, therefore, when the international police organization, Interpol, announced on Monday that it intended to step up its battle against cybercrime with a new section on its website offering advice on how to combat computer viruses.
Computer viruses are a real threat.
But after reviewing the new security section on Interpol's site, many security experts said the agency had simply cobbled together a superficial overview of security issues, and had not provided any truly useful information to help businesses and governments combat viruses or attacks by malicious hackers. The computer virus section of Interpol's site is nothing more than a non-hyperlinked list containing the names of two viruses that were active in April, with equally skimpy entries for previous months. But some experts felt that the agency's effort should be applauded, even if the site isn't as useful as it could be. Weafer also said that one of the major challenges with cybercrimes like virus creation is that they often transcend international boundaries, involving countries where cybercrime laws may, in some cases, be nonexistent. Weafer said that virus writers often use permissive countries or regions as hosts for websites featuring their nasty, downloadable creations or propagate their viruses via e-mail addresses from inside these permissive countries, thereby avoiding prosecution under the stronger cybercrime laws in their home countries.