Mikko Hypponen Attacks Quotations

The truth is, consumer-grade antivirus products can't protect against targeted malware created by well-resourced nation-states with bulging budgets. They can protect you against run-of-the-mill malware: banking trojans, keystroke loggers and e-mail worms. But targeted attacks like these go to great lengths to avoid antivirus products on purpose.

The vast majority of the online crime cases, we don't even know which continent the attacks are coming from. And even if we are able to find online criminals, quite often there is no outcome. The local police don't act, or if they do, there's not enough evidence, or for some reason we can't take them down.

We have seen dozens of different attacks using this vulnerability since Dec. 27. One exploits image files and tries to get users to click on them; another is an MSN Messenger worm that will send the worm to people on your buddy list, and we have seen several spam attacks.

At the moment we are not aware of any attacks that would have used this vulnerability.

Antivirus systems need to strike a balance between detecting all possible attacks without causing any false alarms. And while we try to improve on this all the time, there will never be a solution that is 100 percent perfect.