McAfee,Inc. Supports Common Malware Enumeration Initiative to Help Alleviate Problems With Malware Naming

McAfee, Inc.
(NYSE: MFE), the leader in Intrusion Prevention and Security Risk Management,
today announced its participation in the Common Malware Enumeration (CME)
initiative, an effort headed by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness
Team (US-CERT) to promote the adoption of a neutral, shared identification
method for naming malware. McAfee(R) AVERT(R), the company's Anti-Virus and
Vulnerability Emergency Response Team, has joined as a member of the CME
Editorial Board to help bring the CME's concept to maturity and to help expand
its reach to other members of the anti-malware industry.
The CME initiative is designed to reduce the public's confusion in
referencing threats during malware incidents, enhance communications between
anti-virus vendors, and improve information sharing among the information
security community. The effort is fashioned similarly to the Common
Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) initiative, which is also operated by
MITRE in support of US-CERT for standard naming around all publicly known
vulnerabilities. McAfee, which a member of both initiatives, has joined the
CME to demonstrate its support and commitment to helping the industry
alleviate the problems surrounding current naming conventions.
"During the outbreak process it can be difficult for anti-virus companies
to stay coordinated with virus names, and, as a result, threats are given a
variety of names and variant designations," said Jimmy Kuo, research fellow,
McAfee AVERT. "This is even harder on IT administrators, because their
products may be alerting them to threats with completely different names than
what another security vendor may be calling them. The CME initiative will
help alleviate this problem with the use of identifiers, so even if a name is
slightly different between various vendors, the identifier will match."
As a member of the CME initiative, McAfee will share its samples with the
CME during an outbreak with as much information about the threat as possible.
McAfee will automatically receive a CME identifier for the threat, which is
also automatically shared with other participants of the CME. All
participants are then expected to disseminate the CME identifier as quickly as
possible to the entities it regularly communicates with, including any press
it might be speaking to. In addition, McAfee will also reference the
identifier information on its virus information library located on the McAfee
Web site (vil.nai.com), so that users can search for a threat by its
identifying number as well as the virus name.
McAfee AVERT Labs is one of the top-ranked anti-virus and vulnerability
research organizations in the world, employing researchers in fourteen
countries on five continents. McAfee AVERT combines world-class malicious code
and anti-virus research with intrusion prevention and vulnerability research
expertise from the McAfee(R) IntruShield(R), McAfee(R) Entercept(R) and
McAfee(R) Foundstone(R) Professional Services organizations. McAfee AVERT
protects customers by providing cures that are developed through the combined
efforts of McAfee AVERT researchers and McAfee AVERT AutoImmune(TM)
technology, which applies advanced heuristics, generic detection, and
ActiveDAT technology to generate cures for previously undiscovered viruses.

About McAfee, Inc.
McAfee, Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, California and the global
leader in Intrusion Prevention and Security Risk Management, delivers
proactive and proven solutions and services that secure systems and networks
around the world. With its unmatched security expertise and commitment to
innovation, McAfee empowers home users, businesses, the public sector, and
service providers with the ability to block attacks, prevent disruptions, and
continuously track and improve their security. http://www.mcafee.com.

NOTE: McAfee, AVERT, Entercept, IntruShield, and Foundstone are
registered trademarks or trademarks of McAfee, Inc. and/or its affiliates in
the US and/or other countries. McAfee Red in connection with security is
distinctive of McAfee brand products. All other registered and unregistered
trademarks herein are the sole property of their respective owners.

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