Many computer users rely on antivirus software from McAfee and Symantec to protect their computers from malware, worms, and viruses. Since the creation of viruses outpaces the protection abilities of the software, antivirus protection lags behind and may not be as secure as you think. [Gary Warner] provides some examples of current malware making the rounds that continue to be unaddressed by anti-virus vendors, including the recent “CNN Alerts: Breaking News” spam, which morphed into MSNBC alert spoofs. Our advice? Keep your antivirus software updated, but don’t believe that it will catch everything for you. Only open files from sources you know and trust.
[via Waxy]
This is a hack?
WOW!
I must say did you guys really think that your readers (who I imagine are here for actual hacks) are prepubescent girls? We are here to learn about hacks not be told for the 8921738469872568397656831709378917204672180456873168043267468021 time that our virus scaners cannot keep up with the viruses released. REALLY WTF. I thought I would keep reading this site as you had some interesting topics every once in a while, but this one insults my intelligence. I will say good day as this will be the last article of yours that I will be reading.
Wow, bigballs, have an emo tear on me. Personally I take this site as a H/P/C/V blog site. So as long as there are news about h/p/c/v then they’ll post it, although their main focus is DIY hacks.
Regardless, this topic is kind of a no duh, I mean AV protectors are like insurance for a car, your not wanting to get into a accident, but if it happens you have better protection. Personally computers need to stop focusing on mcafee and symantec, because as we all know they are just crap, but because they serve the ignorant, they make more money.
Oh well, I would like to see more people get infected with viruses, real viruses, not this spyware/malware/worm crap, im talking about the old school kind :D
While I am not as pissed off as the previous poster – I will point out this:
Since when has AV been an end all? Since when should you open files from untrusted sources even if you have AV? This really isn’t a hack and it really isn’t news either.
Of course virus creation outpaces anti-virus. One virus can be obfuscated hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of different ways [see Storm Worm for an overhyped example]. We’ve proven that signiture-based detection is a terrible way to detect viruses – because even if we can catch all 100-thousand of those obfuscations it’s a huge burden on AV software, AV vendors, consumers and their bandwidth.
Right now the AV industry (in light of staying alive, competing and making better products than the competition) are racing for very good behavioral recognition of malicious binaries and activity.
Not news, not a hack, not really that interesting either. But I’m not going to whine about it – I choose to come here and hackaday is free.
Sorry, you can’t say “Not news, not a hack, not really that interesting either.” and then in the next sentence say “But I’m not going to whine about it” without being a hypocrite.
Don’t be ashamed to point out what is not a hack. Hackaday chooses to post non-hacks. You have a right to speak up and point out what is not a hack. Aside from abandoning the site all together, it is the only viable method of getting the authors to stop posting garbage.
How is this a hack?
And how is this even news? We’ve known about zero-day attacks for years now.
aside not being a hack, I agree with #1. seems insulting to suggest the hackaday audience isnt smart enough to already grasp this -very- basic concept.
i wont complain about news items, im not so bothered. but fluff or newbie news is just out of line for this kind of site methinks
jus’ my 2c
crap hack :(
I’m reminded of this: http://xkcd.com/463/
This sounds like an email from my grandmother, not something I would expect on a site about hardware hacking.
I’ve been looking for this very subject for awhile now – no one has content just like this. Really glad I found this site. Are you willing to be a guest blogger on my site? I’ll email you with some details if you want.