Re: Spam cube

[Drsolly <drsollyp () drsolly com>]

On Sun, 19 Mar 2006, Predrag Ivanovic wrote:

> [Sorry for late reply,not properly healed eye injury came back with the vengeance,
> so I was offline for a while].
>
> On Tue, 7 Mar 2006 16:04:06 +0000 (GMT)
> Drsolly wrote:
> <snip>
> > > Check the site for details[1](requires Flash for demos,though).
> >
> > I don't have Flash, because I don't know what it does, and I have trouble
> > understanding why people will install stuff that has unknown
> > characteristics, but that's OK, because I wasn't serious.
>
> Heh.Time to recalibrate my humor detector,I guess <g>.
> Flash,BTW,is another piece of technology gone bad,but
> that is another rant.
>
> <snip>
> > > What do you think about their choice for AV(Norton/McAfee)?
> > > How good are they compared to NOD32,AVG etc?
> >
> > I don't know of an antivirus that I'd want to use. I'm *very* nervous 
> > about this idea of installing a new piece of software every single day of 
> > the year. I know what it was like to create, test and QC for monthly 
> > updates. 
>
> You wrote one,right?Dr.Solomon's Antivirus?

Yes, I wrote that.

> It all comes to "do you trust AV vendor?"

No, that's not the problem. The problem is, how can you write and 
adequately test daily upgrades?
 
> <snip> 
> > > percent of viruses discovered/removed? 
> >
> > You would not believe how difficult this one is to measure.
>
> IIRC,methodology used for one of the reviews was:
> 1.put as many malware on computer as you can
> 2.install antivirus foo,with latest updates
> 3.scan the system
> 4.wipe the system,reinstall from image
> 5.put another AV on it
> 6.repeat  
> And at the end,calculate percentages.    

Yes, that works.

But step 1 is incredibly difficult. If you've never done it, you can't 
imagine how difficult.

It's easy to get a collection of files. It's very, very difficult to 
verify that each one is malware. And if you don't do that, you wind up 
giving a good score to a product that gives plenty of false alarms.
  
> > It all requires a lot of hard work, and since reviewers are only paid a
> > few hundred dollars to write these reviews, no-one does it, as far as I
> > know.
>
> You are right,for software as important as AV are,I rarely come across
> any reviews,so users depend on word of mouth and marketing when 
> they choose it.
 
Word of mouth is just a worse than usual review. Marketing only tells you 
that the vendor thinks their product is good.

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