Comments on: Do Anti-Virus Apps Cause Viruses?

When someone build a new car, the statistics about that car in particular will show that not a single one has been stolen. So why bother with an imobilizer or car alarm? Isn't that encouraging people to find ways around imbolizers and car alarms?

Granted, no known current virus causes major problems for PalmOS devices - but as the platofrm becomes more widespread they will appear. There's not much prestige for the 'hacker elite' in hacking or creating a virus for an obscure system used by only a few people in a non-connected way. However, as these devices become inreasingly pervasive and connected, viruses will become more common and more dangerous.

We haven't even seen any true viruses that spread themselves device-to-device... but with improved connectivity and the boom of peer-2-peer applications they are going to appear; and they're going to appear whether anti-virus software exists or not.

The anti-virus companies have years of experience of identifying and dealing with viruses and some of that knowledge must transfer to mobile devices (which in many cases are like the desktop computers of 7 or 8 years ago) and so these anti-virus programs should be able to pre-empt many attacks and quickly repsond to new attacks as they appear, in the same way desktop systems work.

Having an odly shaped stick that claims to repell polar bears... yeah it's funny (although the Lisa and Homer Simpson version was funnier), but if you've just moved to polar-bear country and all the locals carry s special whistle that repells polar bear just in-case... you'd be silly not to follow suit.

So if you've just moved into mobile computing, and all other types of computers are protected by anti-virus systems... I'd suggest protecting yourself too.

Finally, just remember that writing an application that will freeze your Palm even after a reset takes just a few lines of code (and that's nicely laid out code :-). Unless you know how to perform developer resets you would have to hard reset your Palm, losing any information since your last HotSync. And even then the application would be 'restored' to your Palm, along with all your other applications, to wreak havok again. You'd better know which application is causing the problem... and know how to stop it being restored to you Palm...

Cheers
Russell

russ@russb.fsnet.co.uk

We have MicroSoft to thank for this, not the AntiVirus vendors.

This week I received a bCentral announcement email that was not only chuck full of html, but included an ASP module as well. WTF!!!

It had outstanding features, like recognizing Liberty trojan by filename!

So I'll find it rather amusing that they are now blaming other AV vendors
for marketing a Palm AV product. As they were one of the first to push
their version.

Jarno.