[RTC List] 60 Minutes story: The Internet is Infected

Mon Mar 30 19:17:54 PDT 2009

Well, the a-v companies have to pay for the research from somewhere!

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From: robert beckerdite [mailto:robert at beckerdite.com] 
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 6:51 PM
To: dthewlis at dcta.com
Cc: dwightw at mac.com; pat_bitton at eurestopartners.com; list at redwoodtech.org
Subject: RE: [RTC List] 60 Minutes story: The Internet is Infected

Free AV is awesome for home users just remember that most free Antivirus is
provided by companies to earn commercial business sales.  The line from
Avast! is:

 "avast! 4 Home Edition is a full-featured antivirus package designed
exclusively for home users, non-commercial users. Both conditions should be
met!"   

(My Parallels and Fusion users are all using them in business)

Robert Beckerdite
Senior Engineer and Owner
Beckerdite Consulting
(707) 703-1528
www.beckerdite.com <http://www.beckerdite.com/> 

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Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:18:08 -0700
From: dave at dcta.com
To: robert at beckerdite.com
CC: dwightw at mac.com; pat_bitton at eurestopartners.com; list at redwoodtech.org
Subject: Re: [RTC List] 60 Minutes story: The Internet is Infected

Robert, Avast! offers a free AV client for Windows, which might run fine in
a virtual machine.  However if there is synergy between the Mac and AV
instances it would be an awfully good idea to go for a combined
subscription.  I don't know if Avast! has a free Mac client.  

robert beckerdite wrote: 

How many mac users are virtualizing XP and not running an antivirus or
installing patches on the VM XP install?  I found a good price for Avast
Antivirus both a PC and Mac license for 49.95 which might be a good price
for all the Fusion and Bootcamp users. 

Robert Beckerdite
Senior Engineer and Owner
Beckerdite Consulting
(707) 703-1528
www.beckerdite.com <http://www.beckerdite.com/> 

> From: dwightw at mac.com
> To: pat_bitton at eurestopartners.com
> Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:30:02 -0600
> CC: list at redwoodtech.org
> Subject: Re: [RTC List] 60 Minutes story: The Internet is Infected
> 
> Of course the REAL trick is to get people to turn on their Anti-Virus, 
> Anti-Spam, Firewall Protections, and then keep them up to date on a 
> regular basis. It is amazing how many people I come across who either 
> have them turned off "because they are such a hassle and always coming 
> on when we log on", or they think that once they are installed updates 
> never have to be run. I had someone's Mac last week that was causing 
> file corruption because of ancient anti-virus software that had never 
> been upgraded or updated, but was still on.
> 
> - Dwight
> 
> On 30 Mar 2009, at 6:14 PM, Pat Bitton wrote:
> 
> > Despite all 60 Minutes' (and Symantec's) attempts at the contrary, 
> > the sky
> > is not going to fall on April 1st. Anyone whose system is patched up 
> > to date
> > and who has updated anti-virus protection from a reputable vendor 
> > (with
> > heuristic detection for preference, as this will block any new 
> > iterations of
> > Conficker that appear) is unlikely to experience any ill-effects.
> >
> > Interestingly, the number of new virus examples appearing in labs 
> > every day
> > was actually under-estimated by Symantec. AVG (full disclosure: I am a
> > contractor for them) has between 20,000 and 30,000 new samples 
> > arriving in
> > their labs every day. BUT most of these never make it into the wild, 
> > so all
> > that updating really doesn't improve protection to any significant 
> > degree.
> >
> > The bad guys on the Internet are mostly in Russia and China. This 
> > has been
> > the case for several years. Anyone interested in the backstory 
> > should check
> > out the archives at Roger Thompson's blog,
> > http://tcsltesting.blogspot.com/index.html.
> >
> > Pat Bitton
> > Partner, Euresto Partners Inc
> > Sales & Marketing Strategies for Technology Startups
> > +1 707 268 8968/+1 408 464 0829 cell
> > MSN IM: pbitton at hotmail.com
> > Skype: pat.bitton
> > Follow me on Twitter @PatBitton
> > www.eurestopartners.com <http://www.eurestopartners.com/> 
> >
> > Looking for security advice? Check out
> > www.theinternetprotectors.com <http://www.theinternetprotectors.com/> 
> >
> >
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> List mailing list
> List at redwoodtech.org
> http://redwoodtech.org/mailman/listinfo/list_redwoodtech.org

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