[Hidden-tech] Windows security (sic)

[Andy Klapper]

I can tell you that the 60,000 number for Windows is a very misleading
number.  Having worked in this industry let me explain where this number
comes from.  Fortunately for all of us the people creating software viruses
are not a very original lot.  One person gets a clever idea and writes a
novel computer virus, which he/she posts onto a virus news group.  60 other
people take that virus and modify it slightly and give it a new name.
Fortunately for us once again most of these other people, called "script
kiddies", are not very good and botch the job making the virus no longer
functional or at least less stable than the original.

So, if most of these viruses are copies of a base virus and can be detected
by a single tell tale signature where does the 60,000 number come from?  The
marketing department of anti-virus software companies.  Each marketing
department wants to convince you that they are the best product at finding a
fixing computer viruses and one way they do that is to pump up the number of
computer viruses that they can detect, even if that number makes no rational
sense what so ever.  I'm also sure that they include computer viruses that
infect products that no longer exist or are no longer widely used.

Yes, there are still more computer viruses that target Microsoft products
than non-Microsoft products.  I would suspect that the number for the Mac is
much higher than stated because Microsoft's Office Suite runs on the Mac and
Microsoft's scripting language is a prime target of virus writers.

Microsoft has always made the assumption that there are more stupid and lazy
people than smart and knowledgeable people.  They write software for the
former and trounced SUN while SUN told customers to RTFM and made nasty
noises about PC's being toys.  The downside of making the customer's life
easier has been problems with security.  Microsoft may find a way around
this problem (infections are down since they made auto update easier).  Last
time I checked (awhile ago I grant you), Linux was like an old MG.  A great
car to drive, fun, fast, good looking, as long as you liked to work on cars
it was perfect.



Andy.


-----Original Message-----
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Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2005 9:46 PM
To: Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Hidden-tech] Windows security (sic)

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On May 27, 2005, at 1:50 PM, Mark Bucciarelli wrote:
> It also doesn't hold up when you look at the virus counts and compare
> to desktop share:
> - there are about 60,000 viruses known for Windows, 40 or so for the
> Macintosh, and perhaps 40 for Linux.

Good points overall Mark.  But you vastly overstate the number of
"viruses" for Mac OSX and/or Linux.  It certainly comes nowhere close
to 40 for either (Mac Classic had a couple minor ones, it is true).
What gets called a virus on those unix-like systems is always a
"theoretical attack that might work if you can already 'get root', or
if the user cooperates to a high degree with the attack."

The number of historical "live" viruses for either OSX or Linux is
exactly zero.  And the worst attack that could ever conceivably be
developed for either is far less serious than the sort of thing a
Windows machine gets infected with on a daily basis.

Remember, friends don't let friends run Windows!

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