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Re: No anti-virus software? No internet connection


From: Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 05:08:45 -0400

On Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:47:01 +0200, Walter van Holst said:

The answer to that kind of question is quite often related to the
industry average. For example no more failures than one standard
deviation below the industry average.

Ahh.. but that doesn't really help either.  Consider that not all failures
are created equal.  Should a failure to detect some unknown basically harmless
strain that's only been seen on 4 machines in Zimbabwe count the same as
failing to notice that a machine is still infected with Code Red or something
that's virulent and malicious and on a very large current burn?  Do you even
care it didn't detect the Zimbabwe strain your machine has never been
exposed to?

For that matter, do you really want to create a situation where the various
A/V companies now have an *incentive* to make sure their competitors don't
detect something (either by failing to share data, or resorting to having
malware custom-crafted)?  The only reason the whole A/V industry manages
to keep up safe at all is because they're in general cooperating.  If each
one had to do all the research themselves, the prices would go up and quality
would go down.


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