Information Security News: RE: MS Outlook booted off campus

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: security curmudgeon <jericho () attrition org>
To: David.Wall () RANDOLPH AF MIL
cc: isn () attrition org

> Forwarded from: Wall David Civ AETC/DOXD <David.Wall () RANDOLPH AF MIL>
>
> Is it just me, or is somebody burying their heads in the sand?  
> Whatever happened to maintaining the latest antiviral signature
> files so you don't get hit in the first place?
>
> Am I missing something here?????
Yep.

You are missing that the anti-virus industry is a 99.9% re-active
industry. They write signatures shortly after the virus hits people.
Even with a large number of anti-virus users updating sigs on a daily
(even hourly basis), it leaves a hundred million+ that use no
anti-virus at all. Several anti-virus packages ship with Heuristic
scanning off by default even, making it that much harder to guard
against viruses that are new.

The obvious reason is that if the anti-virus packages were pro-active
and stopped viruses before mass infection, they wouldn't get their
monthly/yearly subscription fees for signatures, and their revenue
stream would take a big hit.

By eliminating software that is a target of viruses and worms, it is a
pro-active measure to help stop the problem. Compare the various
windows based worms/viruses with worms that target unix
vulnerabilities.



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