[weebrain (OP)]

Do antivirus software developers create viruses and distribute them?


sir loony

[tweener]

I don't think so.  I think there are enough punks out there creating viruses that the anti-virus developers don't have to drum up business for themselves.



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John - The Eternal Pessimist.

[chris]

John ! How are you ? Long time no see !

Great to see you back again !

Chris

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
 - Groucho Marx

[neilep]

quote:Originally posted by weebrain

Do antivirus software developers create viruses and distribute them?


sir loony

I did hear too!...that some viruses out there were created by the very people who create the anti virus programs....perhaps it was an extremely cynical news cast I was listening to....still...I must admit....it wouldn't surprise me if it were true...but, as John(tweener) says above...why would they need to with enough already being around ? except for the fact that they would know how to defeat it straight away if they had created it in the first place.........hmmmmmmmmmm !!

Men are the same as women.... just inside out !!

[tweener]

Hi Chris!  I'm glad to be back.  I hope I can keep it up - it feels good.

As for the virus threat, the ones that worry me are the ones they don't catch or the ones they decide not to worry about because they "aren't a threat".  Just think - a virus or trojan can do anything the programmer wants it to do.  The ones we hear about are the ones that replicate wildly or destroy large amounts (or small amounts of very critical) of data.  What of the ones that are designed to quietly sit on your computer, look for interesting number combinations (like ID no. or credit cards) and once in a while send a small message back to their creator.  What about the ones that replicate, but not wildly - just enough to get around and snoop into all sorts of places.  Your virus software won't catch these because it is looking only for certain strings of data that are known virus signatures.

----
John - The Eternal Pessimist.

[Razor]

It's not uncommon for anti-virus developers to create viruses, it's usually the small companies trying to gain some distance that create unique viruses that only THIER software can remove, or companies that are losing money.
Fortunately though, they're a minority, so dont stress over it too much![]

p.s it does'nt take long for honest anti-virus developers (i.e 'norton') to track and crack down on these little "pest"!

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http://www.compfused.com/directlink/132

[weebrain (OP)]

hmm..."norton", i used to have norton but it kept crashin my pc. so i went about the process of removing the dam thing, and if you have ever had norton you will know what a god dam pain it is to remove, without goin to the lenghts of wagin a hundred year war on the thing.

it behaves like a virus would went you try to removes it, with all the crashin it caused me i think it was much better ,when i had 2,000,000 viruses!

"norton, the world most accepted virus" someone sell me the antivirus software to remove this one, fully!



sir loony

[Ultima]

There aren't many old school viruses around anymore, i.e. the ones that would write themselves all over the place including boot sectors of stuff. Nearly all viruses now are worms or trojans designed for social reasons, like distributed denial of service attacks on "disreputable" companies, or finding out serial keys for software, or credit card numbers []. Most virus checking software like Sophos etc. don't focus on "spyware" so I doubt that they produce all of the trojans around, however a lot of the smaller and newer anti-spyware developers are probably creating half of what they get rid of. A lot of the spyware around is used to sell databases of "market research" to larger companies. If you have a good firewall that's not the MS default one, then it's no big deal you can just block all the traffic thats coming and going from your machine. For instance anyone who uses real player... that pretty much is a trojan, it monitors almost everything you do online and reports it back to real player marketing. The AOL web browser does pretty much the same thing to. It's not some anonymous skript kiddie you should be worried about but large corporations doing marketing, this fuels the trojan developers as they are making $$$'s.

Another reason for all these viruses is that Micro$oft suck ass at security and all the default settings for Windows are left very insecure so that it's simple for home users to setup a network etc. Computing and the internet are no longer home to just highly computer literate geeks, so all the bad stuff has evolved to exploit this, e-mail worms are the best example: "Click here for red hot XXX". Anyone who has been on the net for more than a year knows that is a NO CLICK zone; and will result in the swift creation of about a million window pop-ups, and copious amounts of porn shortcuts on your desktop. Another thing I find really funny is that there is a lot of people online looking for love... therefore you get worms like luv-bug attacking people who just want to be loved [] The internet is just like some back street alley in the real world, except we have no law enforcement.
If you want to avoid most of this stuff avoid using any Microsoft applications that use a network, most of the security exploits these things use are specific to Microsoft products. Microsoft are targeted because EVERYONE uses there stuff, plus hardly anyone bothers to change from the default settings. It's like having the exact same lock on everyones car and home then expecting this to be secure... it only takes the inspection and breaking of one lock to undo them all.

So even if antivirus developers do create some of the viruses, it doesn't matter..! People who are careful about network/computer security don't get the viruses in the first place. In the past two years the worst I've had is a couple of tracking cookies from when I use Internet Explorer to do a Windows Update; and real player... which I haxed so it can't contact the real player servers.

Replace MSInternetExplorer with FireFox http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

And MSOutlookExpress with Thunderbird http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

If you want to be super safe buy yourself a standalone router with a NAT (Network Address Translation) firewall built in. This stops anything in the outside world getting hold of the actual address of your machine. http://computer.howstuffworks.com/nat.htm

wOw the world spins?

[Razor]

Yeah microsoft do suck at security, my moms got an apple MAC and she says it runs as smooth as a baby's behind!
Im still yet to be convinced that Apple MAC is better than Microsoft besides the 100yr old rusty pad lock that protects all the valuable information of millions of users everywhere.

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Inducing excrement is lethal!
YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!

Has anyone took notice of my 'Real Name' yet??





http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2005/110805perspective.htm

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[Ultima]

Apple win by being proprietary not good at software development. You want to get some GNU/Linux going on!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux

wOw the world spins?