Interview: Virus protection for 2007

By Ed Dawson, PC Authority

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A new year, a new operating system and still, the danger of data loss to viruses is as great as ever.

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Sophos, makers of enterprise anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall technology have released their Security Threat Report for 2007. Painting an image of a malignant underworld filled with increasing numbers of criminals, hackers and identity thieves, the future looks grim for commerce on the Internet.

PC Authority had the opportunity to speak with Paul Ducklin, Head of Technology, Asia Pacific for Sophos and gain some insight into the report’s findings. Mr Ducklin is responsible for supervising the work carried out in the Sophos High Security Virus Research and Development laboratory in Australia and provides strategic input into global product development.

Initially we queried Paul about Windows Vista. Many people are surprised at Windows Vista’s existing vulnerabilities, which older malicious software can defeat. Did the beta test of Vista expose it prematurely to malware authors? Paul explained that in altering code in any way, the potential always exists to introduce new problems.

“It would naïve to expect that by fixing old things they haven’t introduced new holes” he said. Paul pointed to the case of the “Happy 99” virus, which was released during 1998 and 1999, but continued to spread well beyond that time. This was because of the particularly effective method of distribution, which sent the virus as an attachment named “Happy 99”, but no other information was added to the message that would easily identify it as malicious. People continued to click on the unknown attachment "Happy 99", despite numerous warnings and common sense suggesting otherwise.

“Vistarizing your viruses is not going to be impossible” he says, especially considering the apparent high degree of user determination to launch malware.

Next, we queried Paul on the dominant position of Microsoft Windows, which of course attracts the most attention from devoted hackers and producers of malware due to its giant user base, around 95% of the known world computer users. Our question was whether Mac OS X or a Linux distribution would manage to withstand the constant assault of new threats and exploits with the same stoic expression that Microsoft maintains – that is, managing to keep the operating system relevant and functional when operated with all the recommended precautions. Should people recommend Mac OS X for people who aren’t highly computer literate, due to the statistically smaller threat?

“It doesn’t really matter” says Paul. Paul also mentioned that Sophos was on record as stating “You might want to consider a Mac” in light of the data on threats today.
But he wouldn’t comment on whether one OS was inherently more secure than another, but he did note that 97% of recent viruses were Win32 binaries.

“Whether the users would find it as easy as they have historically on Windows, I doubt it” he said. However, Paul again pointed to the mass of general computer users and their relative ignorance of electronic security as the pivotal issue.

“If you’re not careful, you can have a genuinely insecure Linux system” he said.

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