Sophos horrified at Microsoft notion of a ‘good worm’
,----[ Quote ]
| Internet security firm, Sophos, has come out strongly against the idea of
| turning ‘malware’ into ‘goodware’, where “someone reinvents the idea of
| harnessing the spreading ability of a computer virus, and of using the
| resulting 'power' as a vehicle for distributing updates or patches”.
`----
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/16703/1105/
Also new (mostly affecting Windows users):
Google finds evil all over the Web
,----[ Quote ]
| The Web is scarier than most people realize, according to research published
| recently by Google.
`----
http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php?id=1991487685&rid=-50
Related:
Windows Vista's Firewall offers false sense of security
,----[ Quote ]
| Knowing that Windows Vista's firewall is capable of outbound
| blocking, but that it wrongfully defaults to let all programs
| access the Internet when it should let none, we were looking
| for an intuitive way to correct the problem. After going into
| Windows Vista's Control Panel, the link that said "Allow a
| program through Windows Firewall" made the most sense to us.
| As a side note, we were logged in with administrator
| privileges during this test.
`----
http://content.zdnet.com/2346-10741_22-53425-1.html
Does antivirus have a future?
,----[ Quote
| Peter Gutmann, a researcher at the University of Auckland who presented the
| results of a study of the commercial market for malware at August's Defcon,
| estimates that a good virus programmer can make as much as $200,000 a year
| (here, a 660KB PDF). Alan Cox, an open-source security researcher, points out
| some additional possibilities. One is malware designed to sit under today's
| virtual machines. A proof-of-concept paper proposing such an attack, called
| Subvirt (PDF), appeared last year, written by three researchers from
| Microsoft and two from the University of Michigan. A presentation at last
| year's Black Hat security conference from Joanna Rutkowska, a researcher at
| Coseinc, a Singapore-based security company, covered a much leaner attack she
| called Blue Pill, which targets the virtualisation built into Windows Vista
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| and into current processors from both AMD and Intel.
`----
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/sep/20/guardianweeklytechnologysection.spam
Symantec security products less than secure
,----[ Quote ]
| Secunia rates the flaw "highly critical," the second-highest category in its
| five-tier rating system.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/09/norton_security_bugs/
Is an antivirus gap looming?
,----[ Quote ]
| The failure of antivirus companies to adapt to the dramatic malware
| appearance rates in 2007 tells us there's time for a change and there's room
| for a new class of tools. "AV is dead" is the battle cry of a new industry
| analyst report. Antivirus companies may not be going the way of the dodo, but
| to many customers, the concept of antivirus as the last line of defense has
| been thrown out the window. It's time for a better approach, one that can
| keep up and really defend networks.
`----
http://news.com.com/2010-7348_3-6195322.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news
Predicting the demise of antivirus apps
,----[ Quote ]
| "It's the beginning of the end for antivirus," says Robin Bloor, partner
| at consulting firm Hurwitz & Associates, who adds he began his
| "antivirus is dead" campaign a year ago and feels even more strongly
| about it today. "I'm going to keep beating this drum. The approach
| antivirus vendors take is completely wrong. The criminals working to
| release these viruses against computer users are testing against
| antivirus software. They know what works and how to create variants."
`----
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/mgmt/0047A206FF40A92ECC2572C3000FD867
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