suggested reading

• ThreatBlog » Blog Archive » Giving (Samples) to Charity
  responsible sample handling is very important and, from what i've seen, very misunderstood... i wrote about it myself quite some time ago but it's something that bears repeating and david harley does a good job of explaining what's accepted/expected in the anti-malware industry/community (as opposed to seeming to put one's foot down, as i did)...
• ICMPECHO · Malware landscape in 2020?
  interesting question/answer about the future of malware from daniel nystrom... there's just one thing i think he missed - if the the past was about fame and the present is about fortune, power/influence seems to be the logical next step... no idea when we'll get there, but as we grow more connected and dependent on technology it will become more and more feasible...
• hype-free: Popular ideas about AV
  here, cdman reminds me of what i can't stand about slashdot and similar sites - it's a mob of clueless people who somehow manage to influence the thinking of other clueless people... if only there were some way to get them to spread the right idea instead of the wrong one...
• hype-free: Stepping beyond the vendor-centric security solution
  good post on the importance of understanding the threat and the tools as opposed to listening to marketing (stop listening to marketing!)... the wording reinforces the av = 'blacklist only' impression most people have, but other than that this is a good post with xkcd-style graphics (for people who need diagrams in their explanations - hmmm)...
• Virus Bulletin : VB2008, Ottawa - conference slides
  no, i'm not going to cherry pick out the best ones... it really doesn't take long to flip through each one... use your best judgment about which are the most interesting to you...
• Sunbelt Blog: Virus Bulletin 2008 keynote address
  great presentation about the perception of the av industry by both consumers and enterprises... also a great observation on why enterprises are less satisfied - it's scale... everything fails sometimes but when you're dealing with thousands of machines the problem posed by those occasional per-machine failures is magnified... the law of large numbers is not your friend in this context... this is not an easy thing for someone to put into the proper context (unless they've got a really good handle on finite mathematics) so the resulting perceptual bias isn't too surprising...
• hype-free: Everything is grey
  an unfortunate observation about the virus bulletin conference this year... everything may be shades of gray these days, but i'm still an uncompromising s.o.b. who only sees black and white...