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No matter how much we pay for antivirus protection, many viruses still get through.
  technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T e c h n o f i l e
SoBig Virus was a wake-up call, but will we finally get the message?


Sept. 14, 2003

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard

   The SoBig Virus was a wake-up call.
   SoBig, which hit Windows computers worldwide in late August, spread so fast and infected so many computers in the first few hours that it caught many Windows users by surprise.
   Why? How could we have been left napping? Most Windows users know about viruses, and only a modern Rip Van Winkle could be unaware of the danger of opening attachments you didn't ask for. What happened to us?
   I suspect there were three reasons SoBig struck Windows users so hard:
   1. We're starting to tune out the incessant rhetoric about the dangers of computer viruses. We hear it so often that we just plain ignore it.
   Unfortunately, this is a normal human reaction. We're unable to live on the edge of danger for such a long time, with viruses raining down on us year after year, without some sort of natural defense mechanism. The easiest defense when you're tired of hearing the same bad news over and over again is to tune it out.
   2. I'm convinced that many Windows PC users rely on e-mail from friends or relatives to warn them of new viruses. Such warnings -- if in fact they do any good at all -- would have been far too late to help avert infection from SoBig, which took over 1.5 million Windows PCs in an hour or two and then spread to an uncountable number of other Windows computers worldwide in the next few weeks.
   The problem with this sort of notification is not simply that it is too slow. It is universally unauthoritative, and in many cases e-mail warnings are simply wrong. Judging from the "warnings" I get from well-intentioned friends and readers, I'd guess that nearly all of them are hoaxes. In fact, I can't recall a single virus "warning" over the last few years that turned out to be real.
   3. The antivirus business has clearly become just that -- a business. Most of us probably feel, perhaps without being able to say it quite this openly, that somebody must be making a lot of money off the viruses that attack our computers, and it doesn't seem right.
   Let's be straight about this. There's nothing inherently wrong with making money in the fight against viruses. However, I insist there's nothing inherently right about it, either. Computer viruses probably should be studied and attacked the same way we fight regular human viruses, by teamwork among private and public agencies. Profit is not the primary motive we ascribe to the National Institutes of Health; it should not be the primary motive for eradicating the scourge of computer infections, either.
   Further, the current situation, in which many antivirus vendors charge high subscription fees in an attempt to hang onto their customers after their free trial periods expire, seems to have created little more than a hierarchy of distrust.
   There's something even more disturbing. No matter how much we pay for antivirus protection, many viruses still get through.
   Why? What's wrong with the "good guys" that keeps them from devising ways of protecting us completely?
   Some critics of the business model used by antivirus companies suggest that partial protection guarantees continued sales because it portrays virus writers as exceptionally clever programmers who can defeat even the toughest antivirus pros. Under this scenario, antivirus programmers have to keep trying harder and harder, and this, of course, takes money.
   In truth, many experts believe the majority of viruses are written by teenagers or young adults with far less programming savvy than a typical software engineer at any major antivirus company. If this is true, why are antivirus companies holding back?
   I don't have an answer. I don't know anybody else who has the answer, either. All I have are questions, and they have left me worried and discouraged.