Posted: December 9th, 2006
I need to get around to booting into windows and try eEye’s free Blink Personal Edition. I’m making this blog post so I don’t forget it. Hopefully I’ll install it later tonight on the laptop and maybe update this post
The free personal version features:
- Personal Firewall (Application and System)
- Identity Theft Protection
- Protocol-Based Intrusion Prevention
- Application Protection
- Registry Protection
- Execution Protection
- Local Vulnerability Assessment
Posted: December 9th, 2006
The semester is almost over. Only minor stuff to do now.
Yesterday I read Dan Kaminsky‘s Learning From Sony: An External Perspective. I would argue that the AV industry will not take the side of their customers in the future and it has made that clear. I remember Symantec stating that their definition of rootkit includes “malicious intent” and apparently they get to define “malicious”. Kaminsky argues that the AV industry is in the business of giving users control over their PCs. If that is the case, it has failed miserably. The Sony rootkit is only the tip of the iceberg. Things like Blizzard’s warden will continue to go unchecked. An AV product should at least inform users of shady components of so called “legal software” and if necessary help them remove those components (or the entire software).
I believe that the thin line between software makers like Blizzard (or music distributors like Sony) rights and “malicious intent” is drawn at both the ability of the users to make an informed decision to give consent for the software to run and their ability to revoke that consent at any time of their choosing.
And don’t talk to me about EULAs! People don’t read them, I don’t read them and in all likelihood you don’t read them either. And even worse, how many of the EULAs out there were written to be fully understood by common people and how many were made to confuse users and appear harmless while allowing for the installation of spyware/rootkits (or spyware/rootkit-like) software?
So, AV products only detect a small percentage of new malware and on top of that they refuse to protect users from shady software (which many consider spyware or rootkits) made by unscrupulous companies – in Sony’s case, even after it acknowledged wrongdoing, the AV companies continued to decline users requests for them to help them clean up the software they should have prevented from being installed in the first place.
I’m so glad I use an OS that doesn’t require me to feed money to these corporate jerks.