Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

NAI’s third attempt to re-acquire McAfee.com was scuppered yesterday when 96% of McAfee.com shareholders rejected NAI’s latest exchange offer for McAfee.com shares. NAI’s third attempt to re-acquire McAfee.com was scuppered yesterday when 96% of McAfee.com shareholders rejected NAI’s latest exchange offer for McAfee.com shares. The offer currently on the table is 0.90 NAI share for…

After re-testing, McAfee’s VirusScan product gains a VB 100% award. Unfortunately an error occurred in Virus Bulletin’s Windows XP comparative review (see VB June 2002, p.21): the results for Network Associates’ McAfee VirusScan were replaced by those for NAI VirusScan . The correct results for McAfee VirusScan are reproduced in the table below. The samples…

While one AV vendor comes in for a roasting, the others enjoy the rare taste of the moral high ground. Last month was Network Associates’ turn to come in for a roasting over its hyping of W32/Perrun, the non-eventful proof-of-concept JPEG virus. On receipt of the virus the company was quick to distribute a press…

Worryingly, many sysadmins seemed unaware both of the Apache ‘chunked encoding’ bug and of their systems’ vulnerability… This month has seen the elevation of what was thought merely to have been a minor DoS on a limited set of platforms running Apache to a remote-shell exploit on a large number. Worryingly, many sysadmins seem unaware…

After re-testing, Panda Antivirus Platinum’s on-access scanner product gains a VB 100% award. Since the publication of the Windows XP comparative review in the June edition of Virus Bulletin (see VB June 2002, p.16), a number of the tests have continued in the interests of determining the cause of problems which arose during these tests.…

As reports begin to appear of the latest VBSWG variant climbing prevalence tables , VB has received a particularly relevant comment from sys-admin Scott Francis. As reports begin to appear of the latest VBSWG variant climbing prevalence tables , VB has received a particularly relevant comment from sys-admin Scott Francis. Starting with a brief rant…

IT news website Slashdot’s report of Simile’s cross-platform capabilities was met with the usual host of ill-informed, biased and naïve comments from users of the site. IT news website Slashdot’s report of Simile’s cross-platform capabilities was met with the usual host of ill-informed, biased and naïve comments from users of the site, along with some…

Is there really any need to include virus samples in product tests? CNET seems to think it’s not worth the bother. Recently VB received an email from an outraged user declaring that he had ‘never read such nonsense’ as that contained in a product review on the CNET website. Intrigued, VB followed the link to…

Microsoft has claimed that open source software threatens security – unlike proprietary software such as its own SQL Server, currently playing vector to a new worm. Goliath of the software industry Microsoft has been getting hot under the collar about open source software. In an attempt to steer the Pentagon away from using freely distributed…