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Why malware is difficult to fight

A former malware analyst has highlighted the difficulties in the fight against online threats citing cultural differences as a contributing factor.

In a blog article on matasano.com, the former analyst says an increasing percentage of malware threats are now international, a departure from the recent past when most were from English-speaking origins and targeted similar language machines.

This, he says, has forced anti-malware software producers to have to come up with different products to deal with the threat which can be, "quite a challenge to determine if it was malware or not".

"One of the most fascinating facets of the increasing internationalization of malware is the cultural assumptions around such software," he writes in the blog.

"What is considered malware in the US may be commonly accepted in China or Japan, and this is largely due to the society that it exists in."

He says different countries have different benchmarks and what may be considered to be invasive in the US or Europe may be accepted and expected elsewhere.

This makes it very difficult "from a purely technical standpoint to distinguish them".

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