full-disclosure - Re: No anti-virus software? No internet connection

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 05:08:45 -0400
From: Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu
To: Walter van Holst <walter.van.holst@...all.nl>
Cc: full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: No anti-virus software? No internet connection

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.

Content of type "application/pgp-signature" skipped

_______________________________________________
Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html
Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/