The MITRE Corporation (a non profit organization) has announced the availability of the Common Malware Enumeration (CME) initiative and its supporting website cme.mitre.org.

CME, which is headed by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) and supported by an editorial board of anti-virus vendors and related organizations provides an identification method for malware outbreaks.

The CME initiative assigns a numerical identifier to a particular threat, providing the public with a common method for cross-referencing virus names. It seeks to reduce the public's confusion in referencing threats during malware incidents and enhance communication between anti-virus vendors.

During a virus outbreak, participants on the CME board request an identifier from an automated system by providing a sample of the virus and as much additional information as possible.

An identifier in the format 'CME-N' where N is an integer between 1 and 999 is generated and distributed to the other participants. The participants then disseminate the CME identifier to their contacts in the industry and reference the CME identifier on their web pages, in their product, or when speaking to the press.

In addition to MITRE, participants on the CME editorial board include McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro, Microsoft, Sophos, ICSA Labs, Norman, Kaspersky Lab, MessageLabs, F-Secure, and Computer Associates.

Use of the CME identifier is completely voluntary, but it is hoped that the public will encourage anti-virus vendors to adopt CME identifiers. MITRE is a non-profit company that provides systems engineering, research and development, and information technology support to the government.