Common virus names--at last?

Joris Evers at reports that the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) will soon unveil a common naming strategy for new computer viruses and worms. Unlike the name-dependent convention in use, the US-CERT model will use the prefix Common Malware Extension (CME) followed by a number. For example, the recent Zotob.E, Tpbot-A, Rbot.CBQ and IRCbot.worm--different names given by different antivirus vendors for the same worm--would simply be known as CME-540. It lacks poetry, but it should eliminate the current naming confusion. We'll see how many antivirus vendors agree to start using the US-CERT convention.