A new initiative set up to dispel confusion over virus-naming, the Common Malware Enumeration (CME), was launched on Wednesday Oct.7 2005. It has been a long time coming but finally there is a way to find a common name.

The problem is, when you get a virus sample and you have 15 minutes to get something going. 'You have to name it, work out how to handle it and then kick it back out ... Now every piece of malware will end up with just 18 names and a number.'

The industry group, backed by a string of global security companies, aims to provide a common name for high profile threats in the hope that customers will be able to protect their computers from malware attacks more effectively.

The need for a more uniform approach to virus-naming has been a long-standing issue for users. Many have grown increasingly frustrated with different anti-virus vendors relying on different naming conventions to refer to particular threats.

Companies signed up to the CME will work to apply the same identifier to each piece of malware discovered by the group. It will use identifiers that will follow the format of CME-N, where N is a unique series of numerical digits. The name will be adopted by the anti-virus vendors, which can then be used in products and websites. Link Here