Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

1.  

   

   Some Random Guy, Aug 6th, 2003 @ 1:47am

   
   

   Think you are wrong

   I have nothing for respect for Rob and his work at Vmyths, but perhaps the fact that it never gained traction says something about the issue. Perhaps viruses aren't overhyped. Unless you've managed a corporate network during CR, Nimda or SQL Slammer virus incident then you may not realize that viruses actually do exist and can cause problems. My 2¢

    

   [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

2.  

   

   Anonymous Coward, Aug 6th, 2003 @ 1:51am

   
   

   Wrong, IMO

   In the last few days I've had two viruses caught and several fake bank and email admin messages trying to get password and credit card data.

    

   [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

3.  

   

   Mike (profile), Aug 6th, 2003 @ 2:08am

   
   

   Re: Think you are wrong

   I don't think either I or Rob at Vmyths ever claimed that viruses don't exist, or that they don't do damage.
   
   However, consistently, the risk of those viruses is overhyped by security companies and the media. Every other day there's another report about some virus, and how many viruses actually effect you? For every slammer, there are at least a hundred useless warnings.

    

   [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

4.  

   

   sbdwestpac, Aug 6th, 2003 @ 5:02am

   
   

   not the only problem

   For years the biggest problem we had wasn't viruses or virus warning, but virus hoaxes. Someone would get a virus hoax email, Join the Crew, AOL4Free, etc... and would send it to everyone on the arsenal. And people who received it would either forward it to everyone on the arsenal again or do a reply all to reply to the originator that the message was a hoax. On three separate occasions this crashed the mail server within a six month period. The only silver lining was that it got us a much better mail server.

    

   [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

5.  

   

   aNonMooseCowherd, Aug 6th, 2003 @ 8:13am

   
   

   who cares about security?

   I'd say the problem is just the opposite -- most people don't take security at all seriously. They hide their heads in the sand and figure they don't have anything to worry about because their computers haven't been broken into yet (at least as far as they know). The problem will continue unless Microsoft ever decides to change policy and stress security over ease of use.

    

   [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

6.  

   

   Mike (profile), Aug 6th, 2003 @ 9:08am

   
   

   Re: who cares about security?

   I'd say the problem is just the opposite -- most people don't take security at all seriously.
   
   I'd say part of the reason for this is that there's a new overhyped security warning every two days. If the warnings only came out when the threat was serious, people would pay much more attention.

    

   [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

Add Your Comment