Consumer Reports Creates Viruses to Test Software

Maximum Prophet writes to mention an MSNBC article about a Consumer Reports plan to test anti-virus software by creating viruses. Security companies are objecting, on the grounds that it's a generally accepted practice not to create viruses for any reason. From the article: "Consumer Reports didn't create thousands of new viruses from scratch. Rather, it took a handful of existing viruses and created hundreds of slight variants, changing the malicious programs just enough to evade detection by an antivirus program with a list of known threats. That's a common trick in the virus writing world; it's standard for a successful virus to inspire dozens of variants. "

Comments

Eicar file is of limited use

[bbernard]

The eicar test-virus file is a great way to see how your computer/av-suite will react to a virus. However, it's not an effective test to see how the heuristics systems and such react. It's non-destructive, and every AV vendor makes sure that they can "catch" it. That's nice for making sure that your AV is running, or that your AV on some workstation reports back to the management computer that it caught a virus, but not for testing the ability of AV software to find new viruses that don't necessarily have definitions written for them yet.

Re:Corporate Honesty

[jc42]

Heh, funny. But Consumer Reports does have a bit of a history of being sued by companies after serious problems with products were published by CR. CR also has a history of easily winning the few cases that actually go to court. Actually, the companies usually drop charges, after CR makes it clear that they'd be happy to demonstrate the problems in court. CR also often publishes their communications with such companies, which is not really good for sales.

It could be fun to watch an anti-virus software company face CR in court. It would be at least as entertaining as the SCO soap opera. Maybe /. readers should be contacting the companies and encouraging them to sue CR. Think of all the /. articles that this could generate.