More on who’s behind the latest wave of virus attacks. Mary Landesman of About.com looks at text strings contained in the viruses of Bagle (sometimes Bagel) and MyDoom to show how ”a battle is waging between three groups of virus writers, each attempting to prove superiority over the other.” It’s a very good piece. But it’s… Read More »
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 »
I like this idea from a Slashdot poster: Eliminate most viruses by zipping everything. It works (I think) like this: Most viruses arrive as an attachment to an email. These are called executables in that if you click on them, something happens. (As opposed to a file attachment such as a Word document, or a… Read More »
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 »
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 »