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Antivirus Vendors Headed for Court

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the yeah-good-luck-with-that dept.

SkiifGeek writes "A showdown between Rising Tech, a Chinese Antivirus vendor, and Kaspersky Lab in a Chinese court could have implications for software vendors that misidentify system files and files from their competitors as being malicious."

2 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. It Could Be Rising Tech Really Is Malicious by NeverVotedBush · · Score: 5, Informative

    China and Russia both are big time into state-sponsored computer/network infiltration. In a country like China, it wouldn't be surprising at all that the government would co-opt companies - especially anti-virus companies - to make them help the Chinese government open back doors, exfiltrate data, etc.

    The very last piece of software I would ever install on my own computers would be a Chinese or Russian anti-virus package. Sure, it may finger other viruses, but it might also allow free access to the "right" people.

    I know this sounds somewhat like tinfoil hat territory, but the SANS organization is frequently publishing articles about state-sponsored hacking/attacks. Why give them an easy pass? A perfect easy pass to use your system in electronic warfare against any country - especially the USA? It is at least something to be aware of and to consider.

    Rising Star antivirus? Who's star is rising? China's? And by what means?

  2. Re:Don't viruses attack system files though? by jargon82 · · Score: 3, Informative
    It's not just "windows making it easy for them" though, it's the simple fact that nearly every windows users runs as admin. We'll see what impact, if any, vista has on this, but in all previous versions it's been a mixed bag and IMO can largely be blamed on a conflict of various policies within Microsoft.

    Consider, documentation on programming for the windows OS, from MS, outlines how to write without requiring admin access and generally speaking recommends this. Microsoft produced software, by and large, does not require admin access to RUN (somtimes, yes, to install, but not run). But all this aside, the accounts created during windows setup are admin and theres no push on the users to not run as admin.

    All this combines to make a virus writers life easy: the unknowing users are running as admin because it came that way, the knowing users are STILL running as admin because too much windows software requires it, and only the truly dedicated take the time to get LUA to work. (at least prior to vista)