RE: Consumer Reports Slammed for Creating 'Test' Viruses

[Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>]

I've noticed a lot of bad feeling against the AV companies. People think 
they write the viruses, people think they deliberately hype the problem, 
people think that AV products should be made so they don't need updates. 

A lot of the comments are "The AV companies don't like to see third party 
testing, and that's why they're against this test."

There's a lot of confusion about why this test isn't a good thing - too 
many people are focusing on the ethical issue (I think that's a major red 
herring, it's not too difficult to ensure the test files get destroyed) 
and not enough are focussing on the issue of whether this is actually a 
useful test.

On Sat, 19 Aug 2006, Alex Eckelberry wrote:

> Now the action has moved to BroadBand reports, where there is a raging
> debate both in favor and against CR's testing methodology.  
>
> Surprisingly, it seems that there are some who actually think CR did a
> good thing. 
>
> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,16725030
>
>
> Alex Eckelberry
>  
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: funsec-bounces () linuxbox org [mailto:funsec-bounces () linuxbox org]
> On Behalf Of Blue Boar
> Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 6:57 PM
> To: Drsolly
> Cc: funsec () linuxbox org
> Subject: Re: [funsec] Consumer Reports Slammed for Creating 'Test'
> Viruses
>
> Drsolly wrote:
> > No, I'm saying that there's an Intelligent Designer behind the 
> > viruses, and your purpose isn't the purpose of the virus authors, and 
> > you would design different viruses from the ones they would design.
>
> OK, I'm not sure what would be qualitatively different about me the
> virus author, versus the natural self-selected population of virus
> authors, but at least I understand your position better.  For the
> record, I wasn't trying to hint that I could write some
> uber-polymorphic-super virus.  I'm under the impression that I could
> write some 80's-style file infecter, and as long as it's original, it
> wouldn't be detected.
>
>                                       BB
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