Major antivirus engines failing to detect malware

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Root cause analysis, anyone?

1. Most Windows usees run with full local-admin rights; in Windows
PCs not managed by some central corporate entity, this approaches
100%.
2. Very few, if any, Windows malware attacks have a systemwide
effect unless the victim usee has admin rights.
3. Windows, until quite recently, has been essentially unusable
without local admin rights and without a central corporate entity for
management.
4. Users of non-Windows systems have far lower incidence of malware
attacks than do Windows usees, particularly those with local admin
rights.
5. While those non-Windows systems can be successfully
compromised at the application level through defects in proprietary
formats such as Flash and PDF, even in those instances, damage is
almost always easily contained and repaired.
6. In thirty years in this business, I have never observed a non-
Windows system which had to be reformatted and reinstalled from the
ground up due to a security-related failure.
7. By contrast, every Windows shop I have worked with for the last ten
years or so has routinely reformatted and reimaged Windows PCs on a
regular basis as a security measure, and more often when an infection
is confirmed or even suspected.

Conclusion? Windows is to computing-as-a-utility-service what a
pack a day of unfiltered cigarettes is to the health of a typical non-
exercising American; by itself it may not kill you, but it sure makes it a
lot easier for a whole lot of things that will.

Until we, as customers of and/or professionals in an industry, take the
same kind of attitude about our computing health as we are learning
to about some aspects of our physical health, the situation will never
improve. Kicking smoking is routinely described as the hardest thing
that those who have succeeded in doing it have ever done. It's
certainly a lot harder than kicking Windows.

Posted by: jdickey   Posted on: 07/21/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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