Consumer Reports creates new computer viruses

[Kopji]

Consumer Reports magazine creates over 5000 virus variants to test antivirus software:

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2006/08/consumer_report.html#posts

Most of the comments are favorable and think it is a good idea.

 

[Beleth]

As long as none of them get out, it's not really a big deal.

 

[Kopji]

I have a bad feeling about this.

Heuristic sampling for viruses is a fairly invasive technique. More aggressive sampling of 'virus-like' activity would also have a higher rate of false positives.

The most pervasive viruses take advantage of known security holes, and the antivirus programs can make problems worse by going into endless detect/clean loops without the ability to actually prevent reinfection.

 

[Kopji]

Maybe they should work on that.

 

[Wudang]

That's interesting. Way way back I used to beta-test IBM's antivirus tool and they used to say that the important thing was to be able to detect variants of existing viruses "in the wild". It was my understanding at the time that there were a lot of viruses that were not in the wild - ie existed only in the labs - and that's what a lot of AV companies boasts were based on.

 

[drkitten]

I have a bad feeling about this.

I'm not sure that I understand your feeling, then.

Heuristic sampling for viruses is a fairly invasive technique.

So? CU has never been known for their insistance on noninvasive evaluation techniques.

More aggressive sampling of 'virus-like' activity would also have a higher rate of false positives.

And, again, this is in like with CU's other established policies. They test hard precisely because industry tends not to. And this is true regardless of whether they're testing anti-virus software or blenders.