scareware and human frailty

about two ago the folks at trend published a blog post about the persistence of fake av that really got under my skin. it was around the time of my birthday, which is ironic because the following quote really takes the cake:

Online, however, FAKEAV is a good example of a social engineering “success story.” By leveraging human weakness, FAKEAV effectively utilizes social engineering techniques such as blackhat search engine optimization (SEO) to trick users.

if there's one time a vendor should not be laying the blame for users being fooled on "human weakness" it's when talking about scareware.

scareware generally presents itself to the user in very much the same way legitimate security products do. vendors should consider that maybe scareware purveyors can be so effective while imitating legitimate security vendors is because of how close legitimate security vendors' messaging is to being an outright scam in and of itself.

use our software. we'll protect you.

worry free computing

we take care of X so you don't have to

you need our solution

the virus problem is solved

etc.

while those wearing vendor-coloured glasses may see the average user's propensity to believe the messaging put forward by illegitimate security vendors as nothing out of the ordinary (and certainly nothing to do with them themselves), i see over 2 decades of marketing and media training the populace to be as unquestioning, as unthinking as a pack of lemmings in a mindless frenzy when it comes to what security vendors say (whether they're really security vendors or not).

it's not human frailty at work here, it's bad guys figuring out how to exploit the one thing that security vendors are loathe to change: their marketing and business practices. legitimate (or so-called legitimate) security vendors made the market for scareware. the scareware purveyors are just showing up to the party, putting their hands out, and having a slice of the pie handed to them on a silver platter.

if the security industry really wants to do something about scareware purveyors, they should stop acting so much like them and start fostering skepticism amongst the populace - not only skepticism in what others say but also in what you yourselves say. stop creating an environment where scareware flourishes. stop doing their market development for them and actually start dismantling that blind-trust based market in spite of the fact that it's paid you so well in the past.

the bad guys are milking your cash cow, vendors. it's time to stop treating customers like cattle. it's time for you to lead rational critical thinkers rather than herd livestock. it's time for you to stop being part of the problem.

that sucking sound ain't the av industry

eva chen of trend micro (yes, i'm sensing a trend too) was recently quoted saying the following:

“For me for the last three years I’ve been feeling that the anti-virus industry sucks. If you have 5.5 million new viruses out there how can you claim this industry is doing the right job?”

let that sink in a little...

are you surprised? i know i am... i haven't been this surprised since symantec's john thompson said the virus problem was solved, and yes i'm surprised for essentially the same reason this time as last time - what an incredibly stupid thing for someone in the av industry to say...

the number of new viruses has everything to do with the people creating them and nothing to do with the av industry... the industry is not now, nor has it ever been nor will it ever be in the business of preventing their creation... i'm having difficulty imagining what kind of orwellian world we'd need to be living in for any group to be capable of preventing people from creating malicious software... maybe eva knows something i don't, but as far as i'm aware the industry's business is preventing their customers from getting infected, not preventing the creation of new viruses...

trend micro boycott

while i'm talking about trend micro i might as well mention this post advocating the boycott of their products because of their patent infringement suit against barracuda networks...

apparently there seems to be the idea that trend is trying to attack clamav and it's users through this suit, but i'm sure nothing could be further from the truth...

the fact is that clamav has been openly derided in the av community as inferior technology for years... nobody bothered trying to sue clamav when it was on it's own, and nobody tried when they were gobbled up by sourcefire... it would have been pointless and it would have lended credibility to a technology that has none...

the suit has nothing to do with the scanner technology and everything to do with the application of that technology... if trend has a valid patent (and since they've sued more mainstream av vendors over the same patent it seems like it might be) then people who make products using techniques covered by that patent need to work out a deal with trend... that's just the way patents work... i'm no intellectual property maximalist (heck, i classify DRM as a type of malware) but i recognize the law of the land when i see it...

barracuda isn't being singled out, clamav isn't the focus of some conspiracy by trend, other av vendors have had to deal with exactly the same intellectual property issue and somehow managed to resolve it... barracuda needs to do so as well, and some open source zealots need to get over themselves...

trend micro and cloud watching

last thursday mike rothman wrote the following:

Is traditional signature-based AV dead? It's definitely on life-support, as Trend announces a cloud-based something or other. Will it work? Who knows, but clearly the sacred cow of AV will be served for dinner sooner rather than later. - Trend Micro release

if you're like mike and think this has anything to do with moving away from signature-based technology then you need to read that release a second time... or a third time... or an nth time - it doesn't really matter how many times you've read it before you need to read it again, especially the following passage:

By storing the majority of pattern files in an Internet cloud database and keeping them at a minimum on the endpoint, Trend Micro helps stop Web, file and email threats before they reach the end-user or the corporate network. This new approach lightens bandwidth consumption on customers’ networks and endpoints and provides faster and more comprehensive up-to-date protection.

in other words, it's still signature-based, they're just putting the signatures in the cloud rather than the endpoint now... it's not your grandmother's scanner but it's still signature-based av...

one of the benefits of letting this post stew a little is that i've gotten to see what others have said about the subject... as a not-so-accurate barometer of av innovation, amrit williams thinks it's the most innovative thing to come out of the av industry in the past decade but alan shimel rightly points out that it sounds a lot like something panda has been doing for some time now... i would add that both are conceptually reminiscent of the digital immune system developed by ibm (starting more than a decade ago) and sold to symantec (and we know what symantec does with the things it buys, or rather we don't)... it would be hard to imagine that either trend or panda came up with their 'in-the-cloud' architectures without taking a few lessons away from this progenitor and so i wonder if we can really say this innovation came about within the past decade at all...

complete / total / full protection is snake oil

it's been a while since i last held a vendor's feet to the fire over advertising meant to instill a false sense of security - otherwise known as snake oil... well, i'm about to make up for that...

now, i want to make it clear that i generally don't go looking for anti-virus ad copy or marketing material, i grew out of that complete and utter bullshit a long time ago and as a result rarely ever see actual anti-virus advertisements (actually, i do my best to avoid advertisements in general because really it's all bullshit, but anyways)... i knew that misleading claims occasionally slipped into a vendors marketing material from time to time but clay (of claymania fame) brought to my attention the disturbing fact that snake-oil in the anti-virus industry is actually much more common than i had been aware or wanted to believe... on further investigation it seems to be fairly ubiquitous...

but before i really lay into them, let's start with the title of this post... we've know for a long time that 100% protection was snake oil, it was an impossible claim that obvious snake oil peddlars pushed on an unsuspecting public years ago until the community woke up and said we weren't going to accept that anymore... so then ask yourself does complete, total, or full protection represent a significantly different meaning than 100% protection? not as far as i can tell - they're the same thing just with different words in order to avoid the old snake oil alarm bells... it's not like we're talking about almost full, nearly complete, or just about total protection; these folks aren't saying that if you use their product you'll be 99 and 44 100ths percent protected, no it's complete/total/full/100 percent protection all the way...

so when mcafee creates a product whose very name is mcafee total protection they're lying to the public and their brochure that states "It offers comprehensive security that’s always on and always up to date—and the confidence that you are completely protected." is promoting a false sense of security - you are never completely or totally protected...

when sophos claims that "Sophos Anti-Virus Small Business Edition detects and disinfects viruses, spyware, Trojans and worms at every potential point of infection, ensuring networks and remote users are fully protected." they're telling you 'porkies' - you're never fully protected either...

when computer associates tells you they are "Providing Complete PC Protection from Internet Threats" they are full of hot air (or maybe something else - once again, you can't have complete protection...

when eset informs you "That means you’re purchasing more than antispyware software, you’re purchasing total-protection software. And peace of mind." they're totally full of it - because they certainly aren't giving you total protection...

when grisoft pronounces that they provide "Complete security protection against all of the most serious Internet threats, including viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, adware, hackers and spam." it is complete bunk - once again, there can be no complete protection...

when f-secure states that "F-Secure® Internet Security 2007TM provides a complete and easy-to-use protection against all Internet threats, whether they are known or previously unidentified." they're going completely overboard - complete protection against known and unidentified/unknown threats is nothing short of fantasy...

when panda software asserts that "The new Panda Internet Security 2007 offers the most complete protection so you can use the Internet with absolute peace of mind." they're actually setting you up with a double-whammy - complete protection is impossible so absolute peace of mind is entirely unwarranted... that brings up another type of misleading claim - the worry free protection... panda software really likes 'worry free' ("Browse the Internet, download any file you want, play online for hours... without any worries")...

they aren't the only ones, as trend micro clearly shows with "Trend Micro Antivirus can effectively remove viruses, email worms and Trojans that can destroy your data and files. You can use the Internet worry-free, knowing you’re protected from viruses in email messages, Internet downloads, instant messages, and removable disks."...

and norman gets into the act too with "This product combines the award winning Norman Virus Control and Norman Personal Firewall in one package to offer customers complete peace of mind while using the Internet." - no security program catches everything therefore no security program should be giving you complete peace of mind...

worry free protection that gives you peace of mind just another form of the install and forget snake oil that we've seen before and that bitdefender is proudly displaying here when they say "Ease of use and automatic updating make BitDefender Client Standard an "install and forget" antivirus product." - isn't it great how they even knew to highlight the offending phrase with quotation marks?

this isn't even all of them... i'm sure if i looked harder/longer i'd find even more vendors doing these (and similar) things... it's bad enough that the words protect and protection all by themselves suggest they're complete - you normally have to qualify their use in order to suggest anything less that complete protection - but to so blatantly do the opposite, making false claims and giving the public a false sense of security, and on such a large scale . . . . . words fail me... it makes me ashamed to admit to knowing anyone in the industry, and very glad i'm not one of them...

[edit - thanks for pointing out that the last paragraph was borked, clay... hopefully it no longer looks like the product of someone who was up way too late...]