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MyDoom Seeks to Destroy Antivirus Firms
Khoo writes "Worm writers are threatening to attack antivirus companies F-Secure, Symantec, Trend Micro and McAfee.
In the latest version of MyDoom--MyDoom.AE--the authors embedded a message ridiculing rival worm Netsky and promising to attack the antivirus companies."
Oh, hang on, they don't really write all the virii... :)
I hope not. Any sane person, or real business that wishes to exude an air of NOT BEING DYSLEXIC SCRIPTKIDDIES, should know to write "all the viruses" instead.
I'm not sure those bigger AV companies will be able to protect themselves. They are slow in responding to threats much less threats against themselves.
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I put together this report for our project team recently. The sources are MCI, Verisign, et al (mostly, esecurityplanet.com article -- yes, google makes reports easy/fun).
Wait time for AV fix
(source: http://www.esecurityplanet.com/views/article.php/
Below marks the average wait time from release of virus to each company providing definitions to find/clean
H:M Anti-Virus Program
06:51 Kaspersky
08:21 Bitdefender
08:45 Virusbuster
09:08 F-Secure
09:16 F-Prot
09:16 RAV
09:24 AntiVir
10:31 Quickheal
10:52 InoculateIT-CA
11:30 Ikarus
12:00 AVG
12:17 Avast
12:22 Sophos
12:31 Dr. Web
13:06 Trend Micro
13:10 Norman
13:59 Command
14:04 Panda
17:16 Esafe
24:12 A2
26:11 McAfee
27:10 Symantec
29:45 InoculateIT-VET
The averages vary from about 7 hours per virus to more than one full day (almost 30 hours). It's important to note two things about the figures in the table above:
Some of the programs were able to detect some of the viruses in the testing period heuristically -- without needing an update. Ikarus, Quickheal, and Virusbuster were able to do this with the Dumaru.Y virus, whereas Norman and RAV were able to do it with Bagle.B. In those cases, the anti-virus program was assigned a response time of zero for that one virus. This reduced those vendors' average response times.
On the other hand, A2 had not posted a signature for the Bagle.B virus within three days, when the test period ended. This program, therefore, was assigned a response time of 35 hours in this instance. If this virus had not been considered in the statistics, A2's average response time would have been reduced to 15:26 rather than 24:12.
Hours to saturation/Dollar damage done by:
Klez 2.5 hours $9B
Sobig 10 hours $14B
2003 overall virus damage $89B
Average cost to patch and protect one workstation (includes AV, PM & FW): $234.
Global spam decreased in August 2004 due to hurricanes (FL is the largest producer of global spam).
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Nah, ... maybe I am too paranoid, this time...
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
What does that have to do with LiveUpdate? LiveUpdate is the service for downloading new updates, it has nothing to do with the actual virus scan.
Sounds to me like you're talking about Norton AutoProtect, not LiveUpdate.
One virus. Two or more viruses. No other plural is acceptable.
i ru s.html
"Virii" is wrong.
"Viri" is wrong.
"Viriii" is wrong.
"Virodes" is wrong.
"Virusen" is wrong.
"Viruss" is wrong.
"Virus" as the plural is wrong unless you're speaking Latin, and even then it's not really a plural so much as a collective singular noun.
ANYTHING THAT IS NOT "VIRUSES" IS WRONG.
http://www.linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-v
I am fully in support of a keyboard that, whenever the letters "v" "i" "r" "i" "i" are typed sequentially, then administers a fatal electric shock to the typist.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Of course, the reason Linux and OS X are virus-free isn't obscurity, it's because they are fundamentally better-designed and more-secure systems. User permissions, lack of access to low-level ports, and few services running by default all contribute to a fundamentally more secure platform.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.