Sam Varghese
Monday, 28 November 2011 08:42
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
In its eagerness to put a computer running its software on every desk, Microsoft has spawned a number of ancillary industries, the most pernicious of which is the anti-virus group. McAfee is a major force in this industry.
Anti-virus companies operate on the Chicken Little principle: the sky is going to fall on your head unless you use A-V software to protect your computer; you might as well buy from us. Politicians use the same principle but are much less successful than the A-V crowd.
With Windows being the insecure platform that it is, A-V companies have built up businesses worth billions and, understandably, are keen to guard their terrain.
Hence, when Microsoft
decides that it is going to provide dedicated A-V software as a core part of its next operating system, Windows 8, A-V companies know that their slice of the pie is going to decrease. This seems like the ultimate definition of the word chutzpah - create a problem and then provide a solution - but Microsoft, no longer under the restrictions of a consent decree, probably knows it will get away with it.
Thus it is not surprising that A-V companies are looking for new markets into which they can sell their software. And the new kid on the block is Android, a rapidly spreading mobile operating system which is attracting some interest from malware writers. The headlines that are being generated are, thus, not surprising.
McAfee issued
a press release last week that, in its very first paragraph, said Android malware was up by 37 percent. Looks impressive until you ask McAfee for the actual numbers. Michael Sentonas, chief technical officer for Australia and New Zealand, said they were unable to provide numbers - I wonder why - and then referred me to a graph in the
21-page report (
PDF) that accompanied the press release.
According to said graph, there were 60 samples of unique Android malware collected in the second quarter. That number grew to 82 in the third quarter. There you have the 37 percent growth. Sounds like a declamation from a prophet of doom when you use the percentage instead of the actual numbers.
The word Windows was mentioned once in that 21-page report. Once. And yet on probing, Sentonas admitted that of the 75 million unique malware samples McAfee expected to collect in 2011, more than 95 per cent would attack only one platform. No prizes for guessing the platform in question.
In my book, the second fact would be the headline. It is much more shocking, after all these years of development, that every form of malware just continues to increase when it comes to Windows. One can understand if these were early days. Windows, remember, has been around for 26 years in one form or another.
Android is a baby in terms of development. And in the haste to add new features and make it do more than its competitors, Google is disregarding the basic principles that underlie the security of any UNIX-like operating sytem. The Mac people are streets ahead because they have been using a UNIX-like base for many, many years. Google will take some time to catch up.
CONTINUED
