You might have heard about XP Antivirus 2008 and XP Antivirus 2009, fake security products which are actually malware, infecting unsuspecting victims!

The irony here is that our inability to Authenticate what is legitimate what is not is hitting us right where it hurts! Our security! Its one thing to be able to validate whether you belong to a “tunnel digger association” or not and its another to believe that an application is a security software and install it, but only to realise its actually a malware!

This is a very poignant point that demonstrates Authentication not only enables but also protects!

Melih

Talk Back

And this is directed at anyone who claims to be testing Anti Virus products!

Somebody asked me once: Hey Melih, how many percent of the viruses do your Anti Virus product detect?

My answer was: 100% of the ones we know of! If we have the malware then we simply create a signature for it and update our db!

So all this AV testing means is that the AV tester “might” have malware that the AV provider doesn’t. (I say “might” because noone can validate if they actually have real malware or not either!)

Actually there is no single entity that exists that can claim to have all the malware out there. All these companies, individuals, AV testers have only a subset of all the malware out there!

So what service is this AV Testers providing to end users, apart from saying, Ha Ha, look I have something you don’t to AV companies and claiming this is a test?

Wouldn’t these AV testers be helping the users more if they provided all the malware they know of to AV companies so that they all can start protecting their users better? Are they choosing fame over user security?

Wouldn’t it be better to provide all the malware they have to all AV companies and then test those AV products to see if have the “capability” to detect and remove those malware? Or test the speed of AV companies from being aware of a virus to detection?

Isn’t this like saying: Na, na na naaaa, I know a burglar in my street that you don’t Mr Police!? Why are you not protecting your neighbours by providing the details AV testers?

Ask yourselves AV Testers: Are users really benefiting from your actions? Or would they benefit better if you provided all your malware samples to Anti Virus companies let them detect all these malware you provided and then do a test to see which AVs don’t!

I urge all AV Testing organisations to adopt new and better ways to serve the users better!

Melih

Talk Back