This week’s New Scientist confirms what readers of this blog already knew about the growing imbalance in the virus arms race. Antivirus specialists, the mag says, are fighting a losing battle against malicious code like viruses and worms. Research undertaken at Hewlett-Packard’s labs in Bristol, UK, is the first to evaluate the effectiveness of antiviral … Read more
Just in case you were worried that the people you pay to protect you from worms and viruses may not have much incentive to stamp out the pesky bugs too successfully, here’s a new report from IDC, an IT market intelligence and advisory firm, that says the worldwide antivirus software made $2.2 billion last year … Read more
From the Suspect This May Be Wishful Thinking Dept Japan, South Korea and China are set to agree to jointly develop a new computer operating system as an alternative to Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software, Reuters quotes Japanese media as saying on Sunday. It would likely be built upon an open-source operating system, such as … Read more
The high school senior Jeffrey Lee Parson, arrested Friday for allegedly launching a worldwide computer virus, is a loner who drives too fast, AP quotes neighbours as saying. Court papers said FBI and Secret Service agents searched Parson’s Hopkins home on Aug. 19 and seized seven computers, which are still being analyzed. In … Read more
This from reader Mark N. Metz, CEO of Stop Piracy Now, Inc. I wrote about the just arrested teenager suspected of being the author of a variant of the Master worm: ‘Can’t help feeling sorry for the kid. He is going down.” Mark has this to say: You’re kidding, right? What if the kid’s worm … Read more