CME initiative sets forth

US-CERT will officially unveil its Common Malware Enumeration (CME) initiative this month.

The scheme, which will be operated by MITRE, and will work very much like the current Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) initiative, aims to reduce the public’s confusion during malware incidents, enhance communication between anti-virus vendors and improve communication and information sharing between anti-virus vendors and the rest of the information security community (see VB, September 2005, p.14). This month sees the debut of the CME website, which will host information about threats, together with the all-important CME tag for each major threat – which it is hoped security companies will incorporate into the names they assign to the threats. The first version of the CME website will include descriptions of a couple of dozen threats, but a more comprehensive collection is planned for later in the year. Information about the initiative can be found at http://cme.mitre.org/.