Tag Archives: Microbiology

Do Anti-Virus Companies Love Viruses?

Are anti-virus companies behind the viruses? Avecho, Britain’s ‘complete worry-free mail service’, reckons “the world needs to wake up to the fact that the anti-virus industry is not an anti-virus industry, it is a definition-selling industry and they just love these viruses. The more afraid you are, the more money you spend with them.” This… Read More »

Homeland Virus Alerts – What Happened?

The big anti-virus vendors often stand accused (rightly) of exaggerating the danger and impact of viruses; Not surprising they do that, they make money out of protecting people from viruses. But why would the U.S. government do it? Here’s a great piece by Mary Landesman of about.com complaining about US CERT, a newly formed partnership between the… Read More »

What Is This Virus REALLY All About?

Further to my outburst about how network administrators and anti-virus companies may be making the whole MyDoom thing worse, here’s a similar take, albeit more detailed and informed than mine, from Attrition.org. The message: Treat all emails ‘notifying’ you that you have a virus as spam and inform the administrator/company/ISP accordingly. Thanks to the excellent… Read More »

Happy Birthday, SoBig

A press release from email security folks MessageLabs points out that tomorrow is the first anniversary of the SoBig.A worm’s debut. SoBig.A (the A bit means it was the first of a stream of worms that were somehow based on the SoBig worm) wasn’t just any kind of worm, MessageLabs point out. SoBig.A was unique… Read More »