Is it true that some viruses are also made by anti-virus company?

I honestly can't believe that there are members here that would believe this nonsense. I honestly thought the members that frequent "other antivirus" sub forum here were more knowledgeable than this. To actually think that the antivirus companys would write and release malware is asnine at best. Because it is not in their best interest to do such a stupid thing short or long term.

 

it may not be true of AV but there is at least one company on the net selling keyloggers and a keylogger detector (Raytown)

so in the keylogger market this is perfectly acceptable behaviour, because it can be argued that a keylogger is a good thing if used for legal purposes like monitoring what your kids get up to with your computer (and some keyloggers have remote install capability - so could technically be classed as trojans) - wonder if their anti-keylogger detects their keyloggers?

 

I agree that as far as keyloggers go they do claim there are legal uses for them. But i don't like them at all.

 

I agree, but a certain percentage of people that frequent security forums are at the deep end of paranoia, experienced that at SWI quite often.

To actually think Not thinking - its a belief.

Regards - Charles

 

On a semi-related topic, I remember hearing a few years ago of a couple of big name AV companies offering competitions at some universities.
The competition was this: Write a malicious piece of software that our AV does not detect and they were offered jobs.

I distinctly rememeber hearing that the competition went on for a few years before anyone succeeded and they were offered a job working for one of the big name AV's at the time. (don't remember which).

 

Their economy is not the target, US ans US supporters economy are the target.

I am not saying I believe it but just what I have been told.

Judging by the sheer volume of trojans and viruses being pumped out virtually non stop someone is doing it on a large scale which could very well lend credence to what I was told.

 

with hundres of millions of internet users world wide it would take a very very small percentage of them writing malware to flood the net with all sorts of crud. China is not going to take a chance on ruining all the work they have done trying to get into the world market by writing a few bits of malware.

 

Releasing a virus into the wild means exactly that. You can't necessarily limit it to a geographic region and a large number of Chinese computers would also be infected and I wonder what the grade at school would be for that. Time to put on the foil hat. Anyway this has become political and is against the rules.

 

Now would you put it pass these guys to not hire someone to write viruses to stay in business?
Are we to agree that somehow all AV developers are cut from a different cloth?

More: http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm

Case closed -

 

Those are not antivirus companys. and they detect different malware than an av does. A different kettle of fish altogether.

 

Yup. What's being discussed is legitimate companies trying to bolster sales with unethical tactics, those are not really "legitmate" products to begin with. (maybe my terminology is loose here, but I think my point is still clear.)

Anyone following this thread would likely find a lot of interesting reading here:
http://www.vmyths.com/
Essential reading, IMO. Thanks to Meneer for posting it some time ago

 

is that the kettle of fish trojans you are referring to BigC?

 

What difference would *one* silly virus make that somel antivirus company wrote by itself? You really think customers would buy the product just because virus scanner xyz detects one single virus more than the other av products?
Total nonsense!

With over 100 new malware samples coming in every single day, who would bother writing own malware?

Besides, you would notice the difference at once. As said before in this thread, the AV programmers would be able to code much more efficient and dangerous malware - because they know exactly the weak spots in the av products.

 

No doubt, and yet such people are exactly the reason why AV people have job security.......