Article View: comp.virus
Article #3111Happy anniversary to IT (PC)
From: Fred Cohen
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 11:34
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 11:34
49 lines
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2798 bytes
IT has now run for 3 years without any known virus bypassing the defenses. Although we have made improvements over the last 3 years, it is somewhat amazing to us that none of the over 1500 new viruses discovered in the last 3 years has been able to bypass our version from late 1989. Many get part of the way through, and some get to the point where the syst is allmost unuseable, but none have gone undetected, and none have been unrecoverable! Generic virus defenses seem to have become reasonably matured.. By the way, unlike the scanner developers, ASP has continued to publish the details of how to design a strong generic virus defense. AS a result, we have several strong competitors who are always chasing us, and always outselling us. The reality is that in this commercial world, our software copyrights do not protect us from this, and since Patents are too expensive and unstable in the software world of today, the ONLY protection that works is the protection of being owned by a big rich company. (With the reverse engineering ruling of late, we cannot even maintain any trade secrets in our software since or competitors are freely allowed to disassemble our software and design the same thing over using our methods). For the above reasons, I daily deal with the problem of providing information on how to build better defenses vs. protecting my income by keeping our techniquers secret. Unlike those at a University or a big company, it directly impacts my income (in a negative way) every time I publish a paper on virus defenses. In my opinion, everyone should submit their techniques to a refereed journal. The reason is simple. In the scanner world, a 6 month lead time is plenty, and that is how long (at a minimum) it takes before your article gets published in a journal. The only problem is the reviewers, who have historically published my results (and probably others as well) in non-refereed forums before my papers got to press. If the reviewers (who are anonymous) don't have the integrity to maintain the confidentiality of papers before they are published, the system fall apart pretty quickly. Oh well, I have digressed enough from my happy anniversary message. Have a nice malicious-virus-free day. FC p.s. I wish I could edit out the spelling errors before sending these mail messages - do you get all the ^h's on your screen too?
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!ukma!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!cert!netnews.upenn.edu!netnews.cc.lehigh.edu!news From: fc@turing.duq.edu (Fred Cohen) Newsgroups: comp.virus Subject: Happy anniversary to IT (PC) Message-ID: <0004.9211121928.AA09892@barnabas.cert.org> Date: 10 Nov 92 11:34:34 GMT Sender: virus-l@lehigh.edu Lines: 49 Approved: news@netnews.cc.lehigh.edu