full-disclosure - E-mail virus free tags (Was: SHUT THE F**K UP)

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From: nick at virus-l.demon.co.uk (Nick FitzGerald)
Subject: E-mail virus free tags (Was: SHUT THE F**K UP)

"Andrew Aris" <andrew@....bigfishinternet.co.uk> wrote:

> This has been something I've wondered about for a while, its a good idea for
> e-mails to carry some kind of "passed" tag from AV systems only if it
> actually means something. Which as just a plain text, easily duplicatable
> signature it doesn't in-fact as recent Netsky variants are busy proving its
> worse than not having it. So why don't the AV vendors use for example PGP to
> sign mails? Surely this would give the process some meaning?

Sorry -- this is a moronic idea.

_What_ value does it add?

Say we even managed to securely include the scanning time- & date-
stamp, the name and version of the scanner engine and .DEF/.DAT/etc 
files and even important information such as "scanned using most gnarly 
heuristics level" or "used aggressive scan mode", etc...

What would that buy us?

It would tell us that a product that was _by definition_ out of date at 
the time it did the scanning, and a product that is _by definition_ 
unable to detect all possible viruses, failed to detect a virus in this 
message.

Whoopdie fucking doooo!

And you want us to waste gazillions of CPU cycles worldwide every 
minute, adding all these worthless signatures to Email messages and 
even more cycles optionally "authenticating" them?

Man -- whatever it is you are on, you should find a new supplier...

-- 
Nick FitzGerald
Computer Virus Consulting Ltd.
Ph/FAX: +64 3 3529854