what hogwash

Story: Why virus writers are turning to open sourceTotal Replies: 5
Author Content
jsusanka

Sep 21, 2009
7:44 PM EDT
now I can see any open source being banned at companies because all those security certified dorks running around and don't know any better and so they convince vp's just to ban and fire employees who use it because all those malwares are open source.

of course symantic is going to trash open source any time they can. if open source starts to make inroads on the desktop there goes their virus business.

the IT industry is controlled by microsoft and their "partners"

makes me want to puke.

and anybody that says it isn't is full of sxxt.

the IT industry is sick and broken at least in the U.S. Free markets are not working anymore. when companies can buy competition and lawmakers the system is broken. Free markets are great and are the way to go but when there is greed and dishonesty abound they are broken. They work when everyone is above board and not so dam greedy so they can have four fricken yahts.

has anybody in the department of justice ever wondered why we only have one desktop os choice? no other industry is like that in the world or the U.S. this shows how broken things really are.

okay I am done. sometimes I just want to get out of the IT industry. all the politics is just killing it because there are people making decisions that have not a clue.
jdixon

Sep 21, 2009
9:03 PM EDT
> ...when companies can buy competition and lawmakers the system is broken.

Well, at least the latter has always been the case. Whether the former has been the case or not has depended on the companies involved.

> ...but when there is greed and dishonesty abound they are broken. They work when everyone is above board and not so dam greedy so they can have four fricken yahts.

A percentage of people have always been greedy and dishonest, and it's always given them a temporary advantage in business dealings. Whether that percentage is higher now is doubtful. A truly free market tends to work around such people as their reputation spreads, though it takes time. A government controlled market tends to wind up controlled by such people, and then there's no way to work around them. :( Note the "tends to" in both cases; there are few absolutes in this world.

> ...no other industry is like that in the world or the U.S.

There have been lots of them in the past, and there will be again in the future. You should study the history of monopolies, especially government granted ones.
tracyanne

Sep 21, 2009
9:14 PM EDT
As for the article itself. I read it and thought so what.
Kagehi

Sep 22, 2009
4:01 PM EDT
Bah.. Open source viruses will never be ready for the desktop!

Sorry, just couldn't help myself. lol
phsolide

Sep 22, 2009
5:50 PM EDT
A-V companies have a long and inglorious history of being very "closed". Look how long it took for the "Wildlist" to get going.

However, they also have a distinct fear of open-source-style development. From a few years ago, here's a McAfee-based PR hit that has virtually the same content as the article we currently discuss: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/041706-open-source-roo...

The A-V bright lights have long condemned any form of code-sharing, if it's "malicious" code. They basically had a mental meltdown in the early 90s when a guy named Ralf Burger published annotated source code to a virus ([url=http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/1260685/used/Computer Viruses: A High-Tech Disease]http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/1260685/used/Compu...[/url]). I'm not sure there's any evidence of published source code really hurting anything, other than maybe bloating the "V-X Libraries" of the world. The code-hoarding aspect of A-V has always seemed like a personality flaw to me, either because they're mostly elitists, or they're just paranoid.

But the article under discussion is just a small part of a greater "A-V" delusion: that they're getting snowed under by new X, where X is {virus, worm, rootkit, trojan}. There hasn't been a major worm since "Witty" in 2004, and when was the last time you heard of any Windows user getting infected with an old school file infector, boot-sector infector or even "Word" macro?
gus3

Sep 22, 2009
6:33 PM EDT
Remember the Sony rootkit?

It isn't just that they (the proprietary A-V vendors) don't want outsiders to examine their code. They don't want others to see who else has bribed them to look the other way.

Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]

Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!