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Jan062010

Don't worry about news-making viruses. Make us worry about them.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 12:46PM |

Arguably the biggest desktop security story of the last few years was the mass propagation of the Conficker worm. The worm had all the hallmarks of a great news story as well as a security event. It was found on millions of computers almost overnight, it touched government and military networks, and it had a mysterious date hard coded where it would "do something different", but no one knew what. The concern was so great that numerous security researchers formed a task group to actively counter the worm, and people like my parents called knowledgeable friends and family to see if they should keep their PC disconnected on the turn-on date.

The story should have been completely ignored by end users beyond the standard mantras of computer hygiene: keep your backups and AV software fresh.

I am not saying that the thousands of man-hours put in by the security community to stop the virus was for naught. Their work went a long way towards containing the expansion of the network and keeping the bot authors focused on defense rather than leveraging their network. I am saying that the average user shouldn't care.

A computer is not like your body. Your body has an immune system that has evolved to take care of the vast majority of external threats, with modern technology providing augmentation whenever our individual immune systems can't deal with an infection, say smallpox, polio, or hepatitis. Viruses evolve based upon their environment without a intelligent being behind them trying to figure out how to evade a human's immune system. A computer has no immune system whatsoever beyond what you install and what your security vendor provides. Viruses are built by other human beings, and any successes they experience are in turn the failures of your software vendor.

You should be less concerned about the specific strain of virus and far more concerned about why your single vendor can't stop the threat, and what additional software you need to install to have them stop the threat.

I would like to thank an anonymous audience member for a question he submitted that started me on this thread. We do read all of your e-mails and blog comments, so even if we don't have the time to reply immediately, we do appreciate them and they do help shape our priorities. For this, I and everyone else at Immunet thanks you.

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