Comodo has now become the No 1 company in the High Assurance Certificate Market worldwide.
There are two main markets in the SSL business.
Organisationally validated and Non Validated Certificates.
Verisign as a Verisign brand purely sells Validated Certificates. No other company was able to challange Verisign in the Validated Certificates market. Not Thawte, Not Geotrust and certainly not Godaddy. These companies offer cheap certificates that are not validated, hence able to gain market share quickly, but never really threaten Verisign’s core business. .
Enter Comodo….
Comodo has now taken over from Verisign as the No 1 provider of High Assurance Certificate Provider. Not only has Comodo claimed the No 1 position, but Comodo beat Verisign in their own game of “Brand Awareness”. Just look at Google Trend to see who has a more sought after brand according to Google . Remember the days of Verisign saying you should buy from them because they have brand awareness…..well gone those days….now there is Comodo………its not Verisign or Comodo proclaiming they are the bigger brand…but a third party….Google…
So Comodo has more sought after brand and is No 1 provider of High Assurance Certificates.
Of course its been hard work with dedication of around 700 Comodo employees to make it all happen…..
but wait…..
The work of “Creating Trust Online” has just began……
Melih
Verisign has now removed the “Revoke” button while still publicly denying there was ever a vulnerability.
As can be seen in the pdf attached in the post made in our Comodo forums, the Revoke button that existed previously, has been removed.
Unfortunately, there are no winners here. Verisign loses, and Comodo loses. The way that Verisign handled the whole affair is irresponsible and damaging to the industry in my opinion. I hope they can learn from this.
The whole thing could have been avoided, if they simply acknowledged that there was an issue when we reported and did something to fix it.
So far we know that after we went public:
Verisign has changed their server settings so that Google doesn’t index these security pages
Verisign has removed the “revoke” button from these security pages
Verisign has asked Google to delete these entries from their database.
Every single one of these actions could have been done when we contacted Verisign early last week and the whole fiasco could have been avoided. They forced Comodo to go public before they reacted to the vulnerabilities reported.
All these are positive moves in the right direction, although a bit late and unnecessarily public and after they claimed there was no issue, which makes them look not so with it. However, the most important factor is their customers, some of which are major banks. We do not know if they contacted their customers and ask them to verify if there was any breach or not in their security or if that resulted in any Compliancy breach. I believe they should inform their customers who used this service so that they can check to see if there was a breach or not.
Verisign: Trying to keep things quite is NOT the way to deal with these kind of situations.. You are NOT an ostrich..do not bury your head in the sand for god sake!!!
We compete at business level, but we share the same industry! It is NOT in anyone’s interest for anyone in the industry to get a bad name. Stop acting irressponsibly and start working with your Industry Partners!
After all said and done, Verisign is a respectable company and their Authentication division is in good hands with Symantec. I just hope they learn from this experience for the sake of the authentication industry.
Melih
Well, the only thing we can ask from our users is for them to trust us! We could have asked for money, but decided not to
Just trust us to protect you we said.. They responded, We Trust Comodo! For that we are grateful.
Does that give us card blanch to do whatever we want going forward? Of course not, its quicker to lose the hard earned trust than to gain it.
So how do we keep our user’s trust? Well, you can buy the domain name usertrust.com….but we already own it
so the next best thing is to make sure we continue to listen our users and implement their wishes.
Our users need to see that we listen and react to them. We deliver them what they need. We deliver them what they need plus exceed their expectations.
Our users loved Default Deny architecture, but they said it was bit chatty. We went back to drawing board and came up with “Auto Sandboxing” architecture to give them Default Deny architecture that is almost silent!
Lately, some of the most discussed issues by our users have been some of the additional products/services we bundled with CIS (Comodo Internet Security).
All these products were carefully selected and bundled with CIS only with good intentions. From Hopsurf, to search results provided by Ask, to Live PC support help.
Although many do understand our reasons for bundling these products/services, few do not like it.
So, we thought long and hard about how and what we can do!
We decided to come up with a “Premium” product for you all!
Yep, shiny, funky, brand spanking new CIS Premium!
The reason why its Premium is NOT because it has all this additional stuff in it…BUT…its because it doesn’t have
Hopsurf
Ask search thingy
Live PC support
and has a lot of bugs fixed with sandbox etc…
Now you have a PURE Protection Engine, Rock Solid CIS Premium, (CIS v4.1) and nothing else!
We do listen to you!
We always have!
We always will!
Your Trust is our Currency!
Thank you for allowing us to serve you, and serve we will!
Thanks
Melih
I got inundanted with calls from analysts to potential customers asking my views on the deal, so here it is:
First of all, my hats off to Verisign management team for getting such a good deal! They did change 4 CEOs in the recent few years, and hit a plateau with their revenue.
Verisign, like the grasshopper, jumped once by buying thawte (and they got their market share),
they jumped twice by buying Geotrust (and once again got back their lost market share)…
but 3rd time?
Nope…couldn’t jump…There was no company for sale for the 3rd jump ;), but like I said, hats off to them for surviving this long thru acquisitions and almost no innovation for the last 10 years.
How will all these Verisign customers who bought into the “marketing” of Verisign and bought the “Verisign brand” will feel, now its the Symantec brand they have to switch to? Whats the point of paying those extra $$ for a brand they can’t benefit from? Well, was there a brand worth paying that extra $$ in the first place? Obviously not in my opinion! Just take a look at google trends . That brand had passed its sell by date if you ask me. And Symantec choosing to use their own name rather than acquiring the Verisign name, the so called “Most Trusted Name” is a good indicator of the value that Symantec puts to it.
So how will Symantec benefit from this? The question is will they? Verisign’s main revenue,I believe, is from the enterprise segment. Cross selling to that segment is difficult in this scenerio because:
a) the buyers of certificate services are different departments compared to buying desktop security, storage etc.
b)the no of enterprise who use verisign but not Norton/symantec is fairly limited. Lets be honest, for now Symantec does have a good enterprise presence, so they will be hard pushed to get that cross pollunation they are hoping.
c)Verisign had mentioned in one of their recent financials that they were getting pressure in the enterprise segment, and I am not sure if Symantec can mitigate that pressure or contribute to it with this acquisition. I personally think the latter.
Also, it will be interesting how Symantec will react to issuing Domain Validation(DV) certs to malware websites, hence help create legitimacy to malware providers, while on the other hand selling protection from them! This will put them in a difficult position. To majority of the readers: you will be scratching your head wondering what the hell I just said…..well, I said, Symantec cannot keep a position of end user protection while issuing “Trust Indicator” without any authentication and allowing malware authors to obtain them in order to spread their viruses! Yep…it happens in a big way and Verisign is a big offender as they hold a good majority in the DV market through their Geotrust and Thawte brands. So will Symantec fix that? Or will they aid the malware industry by issuing DV certs?
This leaves Comodo to be the only High Assurance Certification Authority that has not changed hands last 10 years! The most stable Certification Authority, who has, year over year, grown its market share and revenue. The certification authority who has over 400,000 certificates and Comodo trust mark displayed and trusted by tens of millions of Comodo desktop security users.
Thanks
Melih
Legacy AntiVirus products allow Unknown applications to execute on your computer!
(before we start you must listen to the music by clicking on the link below..its not the same without it
)
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (aka unknown)
A computer file could be an executable or non executable type in general. The executable one is full of instructions telling the CPU (the intel thingy ) what to do, like show this character on the screen etc..just full of instructions..sometimes, these instructions could be some malicious things like, copy the password and email it to fraudster etc…Unknown
A file can be in 3 states
1) A good file
2)A bad file
3)Unknown file
A system, like legacy Anti virus products work in the main with “Blacklisting” architecture.
They work by saying: “if you are in the blacklist you are not allowed to execute in this computer”.
So lets take the files and push it thru a legacy antivirus to see if their architecture works.
Journey of a Good file…
We take a Good file and push it thru an antivirus…antivirus checks this against their blacklist..it can’t find it there so lets it go ahead and execute…all well and good so far…great…..
Journey of a Bad file…
next…lets take a bad file….(lets be nice and say that this is a bad file that the legacy antivirus knows about, cos there are many bad files that legacy Anti virus products know about, as No single Antivirus company can have 100% visibility to ALL the malware out there, period)..but lets be nice :)…so take the bad file and push it thru a legacy Antivirus….antivirus check this against their blacklist and bingo..it detected it and stopped it from executing….welldone legacy antivirus!!
Journey of an Unknown file…
Now lets take an unknown file and push it thru a legacy antivirus product, it will check against its blacklist…is it there? Nope…so lets just let it go ahead and execute..after all its not in its blacklist….
so what did i just execute?
What was that unknown file that I just executed? Was it good or bad? Afterall it can either be good or bad…. so using a “blacklisting” architecture you just allowed potentially malicious application to run and damage your computer!
If you were writing Viruses…
Now, lets say you are writing viruses for living…and believe me there are many out there that does that and many more who use these to make money from them. What would be the first thing you would do when you created your malicious creation?
Yep, you guessed it right…you would first check to make sure popular legacy Antivirus products don’t detect it. Afterall, if you are intelligent enough to write a virus, you should have an ounce of brain (used for wrong purposes….) to check if your virus is detected or not. And yes you make sure its not detected and then you release it on people….
But wait!!!
This new virus/malware that this Virus author just released will be an “unknown” file and will be executed….errrmm…yes…it will…..so now you know you are MAD MAD MAD to rely on a legacy Antivirus that still uses “blacklisting” techniques in an attempt to protect you but fail miserably!
Yeah but Legacy AntiVirus products have heuristic built in…..
Damn, didn’t know that
oh really, well everything is fine then…:) (sorry for the sarcasm….:) Heuristic is also based on “blacklisting method”, these are rules that identifies files/behaviours that matches a blacklist of rules. The architecture is still the same! You are still running the “risk” by “executing” “unknown” applications. Do these things detect more..sure they do…do they eliminate the risk, hell no!
So if you don’t want to run your computer or your business like a lottery and letting your security applications run “unknown” applications, then better use Comodo
Melih
I hear you asking….
How can there be a solution to a problem, yet the problem keeps getting bigger?
How can I be infected while I am still using an Anti Virus product?
Why am I paying to be protected yet still getting infected?
Did I buy snakeoil when I purchased my Anti Virus product?
Well…..
Lets first look at what an Anti Virus product is! The very first Anti Virus product came about around 1987 to clean one of the early viruses.
Did you notice?
Notice what?
Notice the important keyword…”clean”. I didn’t say Protect…I said clean….
So what?
Well, Cleaning is a reactive thing. it happens afterwards. After you got infected. So Anti Virus products were invented as “cleaning” products!
Just like a washing up liquid won’t keep a plate clean when you put food on it, just like shampoo cannot keep your head clean, an Anti Virus product is mainly a reactive technology which cannot keep your PC clean from malware it doesn’t know. Just like laundry detergent that cannot remove stains, Anti Virus products cannot remove malware they don’t know about. So they can’t even guarantee that they can clean your computer, nevermind protect it in the first place!
WHAT??
You heard!
An Anti Virus product cannot guarantee that a clean computer can stay clean!
So why do we buy these products then or they get bundled with our computers when we buy them?
Good question
Perhaps you can answer my question first: “Between 1987 and now (so far its still 2010), what has changed in an Anti Virus product to make us think that they can Keep a clean computer clean?” Can you please point me to a technological breakthru or innovation or anything of that nature to tell me that “hey, thanks to this advancement we can use an Anti Virus product to keep our computers clean”?
And the answer is?
…………………………..
…………………………………
……………………………………………
………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………….. still waiting………
Nothing! Just like an anti virus of 1987 could not keep a clean computer clean, the anti virus of 2010 cannot keep a clean computer clean! That is why you still get tens of millions of people falling victim to malware and being part of botnets!
The only thing that has changed between 1987 and 2010 is the way these Anti Virus products are marketed! Now you are buying laundry detergent (which can only wash limited stuff) as a tool to stop your clothes from getting dirty…
Silly right?
If you were buying some teflon spray as a preventative tool, then I would understand how it could help you keep your clothes clean…but buying laundry detergent thinking that it would keep your clothes clean…….madness! Its a multi-billion $$ madness!
Time to innovate…time to really deliver that teflon spray for your computer so that a clean computer can stay clean! Time to clean up the Anti Virus industry! Maybe It is infected? Maybe it is infected with a malware called “Troj.False.marketing.32″ ?
Melih
Much is being made about including Sandbox in security applications nowadays.
Whats the big deal?
Well, its not a big deal to be honest. So what if you bundle a readily available application like sandboxing along with your Anti virus! It really is not a big deal at all. Majority of vendors are using this bundling to justify charging for their Anti Virus amidst Microsoft making their version free. They are saying, hey pay for our Anti Virus cos it has Sandox in it.
So why don’ t I see this as anything earth shattering but just a marketing gimmick?
Well for one because there are free Sandbox applications available, but more importantly so what if you have a sandbox! Overwhelming majority of end users are not going to know which application to sandbox or not. I mean how about malware that silently infects them? How will on demand Sandboxing help? How can user’s put these malware that they don’t see into sandbox? Just bundling a new application and expecting the user’s to change their behavior is NOT an easy thing especially when they also have to be experts at catching hidden infections so that they can sandbox them! believe me, we are world’s leading HIPS provider with over 25 million installations. And HIPS for consumers does teach you a lot about usability!
We need a sandbox in a security application not as an add on, but as an integrated part of the security application, being used by the security application (this is a HUGE difference, pls note!). When an unknown application is detected, this should automatically be sandboxed. This way user can continue doing the work without being disturbed with unnecessary alerts, while the security of the system is maintained because the unknown application is held within the sandbox. This sandboxed application can then be sent to Anti Virus labs for further analysis and, depending on the outcome, can be deleted from sandbox or simply taken out and put on the Hard disk.
Now this is the way to use the Sandboxing technology in a security product like an Antivirus, achieving default deny based security with no pop ups or requiring decisions from user’s side! That is what is called Automatic Sandboxing TM. This is the revolutionary patent pending technology from Comodo! Default Deny Protection with virtually no pop ups is now reality!
Thanks
Melih
Now, we’ve all heard about detection, prevention, cleaning, behaviour blocker, firewall, Antivirus, Anti malware, Anti spyware, Anti Trojan, Anti Rootkit, Adware, HIPS, Internet security suite, detection tests, antivirus tests, penetration tests….it can be confusing right ;)… What is what and and more importantly what do I need as a consumer!
I will try to explain whats involved in desktop security products and hopefully will arm you with enough knowledge about what to expect from them in an interview like style, hope you like it.
First of all: What the hell is a Virus, spyware, trojan, rootkit etc?
Well, you know when you click on an application to run….. well it’s just that.. a malware (which is a general name used for all the bad stuff like virus, spyware, trojan, rootkit and so on) is an application (a program that is made of bunch of code that a programmer puts together). Just bunches of code that you send to your CPU (Central Processing Unit) for execution. For example you send a code (an instruction) to your CPU to turn a specific Pixel on your monitor to a specific colour or you when you press a key you tell your CPU to go ahead and display the key pressed on the monitor.. Malware sends instructions to your CPU to do nasty stuff.. thats the only difference between a good application and malware.
Now that we get what malware is…which security product do I need? What is anti virus? why do i need Firewall and million other questions in my head as the consumer.
Lets get to the basics…..the security products can be classified into 3 areas
1)Prevention: Eg it prevents stuff from coming into your computer in the first place
2)Detection: it detects when stuff enters your computer (but only if it recognizes the nasties)
3)Cleaning: You are toast, cos you are infected so need a decent product to clean up the mess.
(by the way you can read more about these 3 areas Prevention Detection Cleaning(cure) in this blog)
So lets start by talking about AVs (Anti Virus)
A good analogy to Anti Virus would be a policeman who has a Photo Fit of a murderer and trying to find/detect that criminal amongst the people/files. So is Anti virus 1, 2 or 3?
Wow.. good job…you guessed right.. its 2! It can’t stop someone becoming a criminal but can detect them. So an Anti Virus product could never prevent a new Virus it doesn’t know about from infecting your machine. Just like a policemen can’t arrest a future murderer cos they haven’t committed the crime yet. Anti Virus products were invented in the late 1980’s as “Cleaning” products. Those days infections were at the speed of how fast you could exchange a floppy disk with your friends
But nowadays the number of malware is increasing drastically and the speed in which the infections occur is increasing, thanks to internet. So can your Anti Virus company give you a guarantee that you will not be infected because they can’t possibly know the next Virus? Of course not, that’s why using Detection only mechanism as your sole protection will leave you as secure as a little lamb in the African desert surrounded by hungry lions! So today’s Anti Virus products are a reactive technology, thats why people still get infected even though they have Anti virus products installed….and they scratch their head, puzzled as to why they got infected!
What is Anti Spyware then?
Same as above…. there are few different nasties and they have been classified as virus, spyware, adware, rootkit etc etc.. at the end of day they are all Bad Code written by bad people. And when you put an Anti in front of the specific threat it becomes the product that is used to clean or detect these baddies.
Ok what is Anti Rootkit then?
Same as above… Products that is used for detecting baddies, but at the end of the day they are all baddies… just different names cos they way they operate is slightly different..at the end of the day they are all instructions sent to your CPU to do nasty stuff, from deleting files, to stealing your confidential information, to stealing your CPU power and internet connection. Same goes to Anti trojan, anti this and anti that…. same stuff…
What is a firewall then?
Firewall has 2 tasks really…one to stop people from getting access to your pc from internet..its like your internet door.. (but don’t be fooled cos everytime you browse some website you are opening this internet door to that website…just having firewall doesn’t mean you are secure). And the other task is for detecting if anyone is making a call home from your PC. Go to your local Clothes shop and try to steal something…..the alarm you will hear, as you try to get out of the door while 2 big guys are running towards you, is because the garment is tagged, so anything leaving the premises will raise alarm. Well thats firewall for your computer. It will sound the alarm bells if someone is trying to make a connection from your computer to the outside world. (Btw, I hope you didn’t go and steal Clothes… resale value is not there..try electronic goods
)(just joking…..). So Firewall falls into both Prevention and Detection category…
So what can clean my computer if i get infected?
Now thats an important question…. Cleaning infection is not as simple as deleting a file on your hard disk. Some of these nasties hide themselves well and bring themselves back to life even after your Anti Virus deletes them at every start up of the operating system. Depending on what kind of nasty has infected you the choice of the cleaner (Anti Virus) product could be determined. The only sure way is to reformat your computer
It sucks..I know…but imagine this, if you are an Anti Virus product “you don’t know what you don’t know” , which means you can only clean what you know of, but how do you know there aren’t other baddies in your computer that your Anti Virus doesn’t know of
Don’t get me wrong, in good number of cases you only have an infection that an Anti Virus can clean, but being sure that you are not infected….is priceless!
So how do I prevent these nasties coming into my computer in the first place?
Well, you have to know how they get in and pull the rug under them!
They get in utilising latest vulnerabilities in your system. So its important for you to keep your system up to date..but i guess you heard that before! One of the nastiest ways is the Silent infection called BO… and no its not Bad Odour.. even though when that happens it does leave bad taste… its Buffer Overflow attack. Its as simple as you going to a web site and you get infected.. yup.. as simple as that..
So what does infection mean again pls?
Remember its just a piece of code that sends your CPU instructions to get your CPU to do nasty stuff like giving out confidential information etc.
Oh yeah..I remember…
So how do I stop these coming into my computer in the first place?
Excellent question! (By the way, this is THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP in your security strategy..stop them from coming into your computer in the first place)
There are new breed of security products called HIPS (Host Intrusion Prevention Systems). These products will not let any application/executable (piece of code that we talked about before) unless they are authorised.
well, that sounds good doesn’t it?
Yes it does! I use one of these (Comodo Internet Security).
These products literally block any code/instruction going into the CPU unless they are authorised.. its like a doorman at the night club saying: Sorry, your name is not in the list, you are not coming in. It denies the access to the CPU to any unknown and unauthorized piece of code (application). So why isn’t everyone using these?
The only potential issue is that they can be chatty and asking too many questions to the user if it hasn’t got a big list of authorised list of applications. I mean you don’t want to be disturbed everytime you run an application. Luckily with products like CIS (Comodo Internet Security) the number of times you need to get involved to answer a question is minimised.
You see the bottom line is: You should prevent any malware coming to your system if you have a clean PC. Cos you want to keep it clean. For that you need to use Prevention based products.
If you have an infected computer than you need to use Cleaning Product. An Anti Virus in main is a cleaning product. So you need an Anti Virus product to detect and hopefully clean the infection. Some people use Anti Virus only to protect themselves. Yep you guessed right, they are the perfect guinea pigs for virus authors! I mean come on… what do you think Virus Authors do when they create their Viruses? Of course they check to see if any of the major Anti Virus products detect it or not! Only when they test it with them and be sure that they are not detected, they go ahead and release their creation to these guinea pig population of people who think they are secure cos they are using legacy Anti Virus products. Of course there are also other kind of Virus Authors who release their viruses even though Anti Virus products detect them right off the bat.. They are the stupid ones! We like them that way though 
But how about Anti Virus testing? doesn’t this tell us how good security is?
NO!
What do you mean no?
Its a No to your question! What part of the No do you not get?
Let me explain you how these tests are done: First of all, these tests do not and CANNOT test if these Anti Virus products will stop new viruses or not. These testers only have some limited access to some limited amount of malware. Basically, they put all these malware into a Computer’s hard disk and run the Anti Virus scanning to see if these Anti Viruses detect them or not. So it only checks detection capability of an anti virus product and ONLY for the subset of viruses that the tester have. I mean what tester might have nothing to do with whats out there and so on. In reality no Anti Virus vendor have access to 100% of all malware out there either! No AV company can! Which means they will always be playing catch up and cannot prevent malware that they don’t know of or don’t detect from infecting your computer. Remember, thats why I said Legacy Anti Virus products that exist today are all reactive in nature and playing catch up and NOT preventing a virus they don’t know from entering into your computer.
So how about Email scanning, IM scanning and web scanning? There are products who do these isn’t it important?
Ok, lets remember what a malware was.. piece of instruction designed to do bad stuff. You see, these instructions must come from somewhere to the CPU.. now for a computer these things can only live in 2 places… Hard Disks or RAM (it could also be like USB storage etc but you get the gist). What you see on email is either on hard disk or RAM… what you see on the web is either on your hard disk or RAM… what you see on your IM is either on your hard disk or RAM, period.. Marketing people will try to make you think that they are stopping bad stuff from coming into your computer before it hits your computer but thats misleading. All these emails, web, IM and so on are already in your Hard disk or RAM. As long as you check the hard disk and RAM and use prevention based technology, then you know that those baddies can’t get in and cause damage.
So in summary…a security product can provide you
Prevention
Detection
Cleaning
and you need to prevent the bad stuff coming in to your computer in the first place. For that you need prevention based technologies.
Melih
Bollocks to that!
Symantec says “free antivirus software isn’t able to keep up with full-price suites like those offered by Symantec.” I say Bollocks to that!
Symantec says “free antivirus software isn’t able to keep up with full-price suites like those offered by Symantec.” I say Bollocks to that!
And I do agree with what Symantec says when they say: “there is a very, very big gap between what antivirus does and the threats that are being delivered today.” And thats exactly why CIS has a “Default Deny” technology.
And again I do agree with what Symantec says when they say:
“Don’t get me wrong, antivirus is very important, but it is the last security technology that you want to rely on for protection. It means that you’ve been infected: threat has actually gotten to your machine. So, it is the last layer of defense that you ever want to have activated.
“It is very important, but we would much rather stop the threat from ever getting to your machine, rather than rely on what we call a reactive technology, where the threat has already been delivered to your machine already.” And that’s exactly why Comodo has Prevention as the first line of defense with “Default Deny” technology.
And once more I do agree with what Symantec says when they say:
“If you look how most infections are coming now, they are coming from drive-by download, and while these often do come through the web browser, attackers are not necessarily only targeting the web browser. Think about all the plug-ins you have installed on your machine – RealPlayer, Flash, QuickTime – all of these have vulnerabilities too.”
But I say, once again, Bollocks to what Symantec says when they say:
“That’s why free antivirus is not enough: you need in-depth layered technologies, which only come from the more mature paid suites.”
Bollocking aside :), Its good to see that Symantec is trying to follow in Comodo’s footstep in trying to introduce layered security products. Although late to the game of Layered Security, I still welcome their initiative.
However just because they haven’t done a free product business model doesn’t mean that others can’t. There were people who claimed, heavier than air vehicles couldn’t fly, claiming free based model can’t offer equivalent and even better security than paid for products is as big of a fallacy as the above claim about flying! Just because you can’t make it work doesn’t mean that others can’t Symantec! Just look at Comodo.
Melih