By Bill Grogg

If you thought the current threat from viruses was frightening, consider what might be seen in the future.

The WM.Concept macro virus proved that a macro virus could be written and that it could spread rapidly because of the free flow of documents between people. It also did not hide its code, so it was very easy for others to modify the virus by adding their own payload or other features. Furthermore, any application that provides an advanced macro language can be a target for the virus writer.

Likewise, scripting worms and viruses are easy to duplicate and modify. Because it is so easy to write these kinds of programs, we can expect these to be the fastest growing segments of destructive code for the forseeable future.

Additionally, as far as risk associated to use of the Internet (beyond the viruses that could travel with e-mail attachments) it has been suggested that Java applets and classes could become carriers for viruses and there has even been some news about other kinds of documents and media files being capable of carrying infection.