The Security Mentor

Biological viruses can stay dormant for years. They survive better that way. A showy virus like Ebola will find itself without any living, vulnerable hosts in a matter of weeks. Viruses are better off hibernating, not causing symptoms, until the host immune system weakens or something else triggers them.

Will computer viruses follow the same path? Will they spread slowly and concentrate on hiding from antivirus programs? Mikko Hypponen of antivirus firm F-Secure says stealthy viruses are here now. Designed to make money by stealing information or allowing remote control of a computer, these viruses aren't about to clog the network they depend on by spreading too fast.

If you've seen my articles on how to read security news, you'll wonder whether maybe F-Secure has a product for detecting stealthy viruses. They do but I'm inclined to believe them. It's a logical development.

You can use the same hygiene measures to protect against stealthy viruses as you do against others. I run antivirus software but it seldom has anything to do because I only open things from trustworthy sources. More importantly I use a sane web browser program that doesn't automatically run unknown software.