Understanding Antivirus Failures and Its Security Impact

Antivirus technology is a crock. It fails to prevent computers from getting infected with viruses, and this failure contributes to many other security woes that plague the world's computers. Because viruses spread, hackers find it easier to compromise computers, identity theft is better enabled, and computer fraud is easier to perpetrate. Virus-infected computers become a resource for hackers to exploit. Some hackers assemble and control networks of thousands of such computers and use them to distribute huge volumes of spam, mount sophisticated phishing attacks, and launch targeted "denial of service" attacks on companies. The level of virus infection is high. It's not an epidemic; it's a pandemic. How bad is it? That depends on how you look at it.

For the home computer user and small-business user, infection is chronic. In June, 2006, Microsoft (MSFT) revealed the results of a 15-month test of its Malicious Software Removal Tool on home PCs and small-business PCs. The utility had been used to scan and clean 5.7 million PCs, and it found backdoor Trojans, or programs that let hackers gain entry, on about 62% of them. And during the 15-month period, 20% of PCs that were cleaned were reinfected. Big companies aren't immune, either. The 2005 Yankee Group Security Leaders & Laggards Survey indicated that while 99% of enterprises have deployed antivirus programs, 62% got infected by viruses. The situation for large enterprises is, it seems, not much better than for other PC users. They may be better able to recover from infection, but they still get infected.

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