RE: how broken are antivirus products?

On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Schmehl, Paul L wrote:

> This is hashed over repeatedly amongst AV professionals, and the only

Might I gently suggest that what's written above indicates a situation exists rather like what spawned the open source and "full disclosure" movements?

To an outsider like myself (and maybe even Jose Nazario?) it could appear that an anointed few control the "proven live samples" and laboratories, and the methods of testing. One could argue that Joe Sixpacks like myself can't double-check the official testing without getting "roundly criticized".

In the past, system vendors could ignore people who reported bugs or wanted usability or other changes. Years of this basically spawned the open source movement. In the past, system vendors ignored or hushed up reports of security problems. Years of this spawned the full disclosure movement. At least, that's how I understand it.

My humble, and perhaps redundant, advice to people finding themselves in some kind of position of authority is to act carefully when defending the privileges of the authority.

I would warn that roundly criticizing even the most mild attempts to double-check official results could lead to loss of faith in the authority, or even open revolt against it. Received on Fri Nov 22 00:51:13 2002

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