Antivirus companies making virus'?

Kaiphas

There was a post on CNET about antivirus companies responding to virii that have not been released more than a couple hours. I'd like to hear a discussion on this here at mmorpg. Obviously, there is no clear proof that this sort of treachery is occuring, but the motive and ability are there indeed.

For simplicity, I will refer to adware and virii as the same thing. And will use the plural 'virii' because it sounds nice and requires less typing than virus's.

Why?

The antivirus industry brought in $4 billion in revenue in 2006. This is a tidy profit when you spread it accross the very small number of key players, (Norton, McAffee).  As Antivirus software becomes more sophisticated, it is able to heuristically seek virii that aren't in their database yet. Sometimes this means that antivirus software will delete other programs on your computer, or even eachother (Trend micro removed Norton from my computer). Advances in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Windows security have made it extremely difficult to write a virus that can spread, and collect/damage data. The days of amateur programmers writing a virus in a university computer lab are over - it's clear that there are legitimate collar-and-tie programmers being paid to write adware and data mining virii.

Most users are not dumb enough to open a suspicious .exe file. Many virii are spread through runtimes on internet explorer, or are packaged with pirated software. A decent computer programmer can earn well over six figures working for a decent company. More sophisticated virii are the efforts of teams of programmers working over several year's on a single release. It's clear that either data mining is extremely profitable, or these programmers are being paid by a third party with a vested interest in their work.

Heavy Handed Antivirus Software

Personally, I have encountered many virii on older person's computers that I fix, but have never discovered where they all came from. Anyways, almost all of these computers are laden with the McAffee, or Norton antivirus suites (firewall, antivirus, on-demand scanner, etc). Many of the subscriptions have expired since the user refuses to purchase a program that is clearly not working. Norton and McAffee both have very invasive popups that continually appear, urging the user to renew their subscription. These popups work under the guise of wanting to protect the user, but it's clear that they operate as adware on the ex-subscribers computer, frustrating the user into (hopefully) resubscribing.

Proof?

Besides Sony's rootkit fiasco, there is no proof that links antivirus companies to virus makers. However, many grey hat hackers and security consultants operate without business registrations. Many of these companies do not offer their client list or work history to the public.

goneglockin

I have been having a problem for over a month now and I'm a litle embarassed that I haven't been able to fix it.  When going to sites like Bank of America or Chase; I get redirected to a phishing page that looks genuine.  The BoA page doesn't have the secret image that's part of the sign-in and the Chase page shows ads.doubclick loading in the info bar.  That's the only way to tell something is up.  Using firefox instead of ie takes you to the proper login pages- so that's how I'm positive these are phising sites. 

I have handled lots of virus/spyware problems with my PC before and it's been a long time- a real long time- since one has stumped me after trying everything I can think of. 

Anyway- who needs to pay for antivrius software when you can always back up and reformat?  That's what I'm probably going to be doing next weekend.

Cleffy

I've actually said Anti-virus companies create viruses on purpose.  I put the number at 40% of viruses are created by anti-virus companies.

vonomous

Nobody except anti-virus companies have anything to gain by creating and spreading a computer virus.  So yeah, its pretty obvious where they come from.