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The Virus Squad

Posted by michael on from the 3-parts-hype-2-parts-drudgery-1-part-usefulness dept.

dncsky1530 writes "Sydney Morning Herald - The Virus Squad - 'A new species has been discovered. So new, it's still unnamed, but researchers are racing to tag it - before it spreads around the world. For the next 10 to 30 minutes, the computer virus or worm is dissected, analysed and identified... "On the day we detected MyDoom, we did another 18 viruses," says Paul Ducklin, Sophos's head of technology for the Asia-Pacific. "There are about 800 new viruses a month. And the unglamorous bit of our work is often the other 798."'"

5 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I wonder by aheath · · Score: 5, Informative
    I remember the days when anti-viral software was freeware or shareware. The anti-virus industry will have to adapt when Microsoft includes free anti-virus technology in Windows XP service pack 2. Assuming of course that the XP SP2 anti-virus software is robust and fully featured. Perhaps some of the anti-viral software companies will have to evolve from providing software to providing security conulting.

    Some security companies do give back to the community. GRISOFT offers a free version of AVG Anti-Virus 6.0 for single home users. Zone Labs offers a free version of the Zone Alarm firewall.

    Do you know of any other companies that offer free anti-viral or firewall software?

  2. So very, very true. by nordicfrost · · Score: 5, Informative

    "If you unblocked port 135 [an access point Blaster targeted] you would be found by Blaster," Lee says, adding that it would just be a matter of time.

    This happened when I installed a (legal) copy of Windows 2000 on my GFs old machine. Boom! Infected with Blaster on the first five minutes on the net, trying to D/L a firewall. Not to speak of the servicepacks... It happened so fast, I thought there was something wrong with the modem drivers, I downloaded via an iBook. I spent a lot of time getting that machine up. But as the family of the GF saw what happened, three persons became Apple converts that evening.

    My GF now has an iBook and is more productive on a computer than ever.

  3. Re:I wonder by merlin65537 · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is AntiVir which provides its software free for personal users, however it's in German only. I've used it on my Win2k system for a few years now. As far as I know it doesn't integrate with any e-mail-clients, but it recognized viruses in attachments as soon as I saved them to disk.

  4. Re:I wonder by Fex303 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Avast! Antivirus is free for home users. I've been using it for a while now and it's successfully picked up the few viri that have tried to visit my inbox. I've installed it on few machines (parents/friends computers) and I've had no probs so far.

    It's got auto-updates, Outlook add-on module, etc. All good. They want some info in lieu of registration, but it's non-spammy/invasive

    You can download it from here if you're so inclined.

    Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with Avast, beyond being a quite satisfied user of their software.

  5. Re:Unsafe by s7uar7 · · Score: 5, Informative

    How do you know? Without anti-virus software, unless a virus is doing something really obvious, such as rebooting your machine, you're not going to. I always find it amusing when I here people say they've been using Norton/McAfee/Whatever for 5 years and never had a virus. That's not their anti virus software, that's just luck. All they can be sure of is they've never had a virus their package can detect. Anti virus software doesn't make you immune from catching them, it just stops them spreading and (hopefully) makes cleaning up easier.