Ode to ‘Digital Defenders’
Bill Boni · Network Security · 2000
The advent of spring is typically a time of optimism, but this year we have been treated to quite a rude demonstration of the dangers of electronic commerce in the world. The now infamous I LOVE YOU virus was a case study of the risks to a global electronic commerce environment that is built in large part on an increasingly common applications infrastructure. It is a fact that in nature, biological diversity ensures that an entire species should not be vulnerable to a single infectious organism. In this incident, the users of ‘alternative’ software, such as Netscape and Lotus Notes were able to watch sympathetically while co-workers who used Microsoft products were plagued by the virus and the flood of variants. There is tangible benefit to ‘thinking differently’, at least when it comes to reducing the impact of micro-computer viruses. The lack of diversity and the ubiquity of Microsoft products demonstrated what information security professionals have known for quite a while, that cyber criminals also benefit by identifying vulnerabilities of ‘standard’ applications.