Malware vs. Anti-Malware, 20 Years Into The Fray 62
jcatcw writes "Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols considers the dissimilarities between malware of yore and current infiltrations as we approach the 20th anniversary of the Robert Morris worm. Modern malware apps curl up and make themselves at home in your system, where they wait for a chance to snatch an important password or a credit card number. Welcome to the era of capitalist hacking. Any self-respecting malware program today is polymorphic, making signature-based antivirus approaches difficult. Heuristics and virtual sandboxes offer alternatives, but all such methods are reactive. Unfortunately, monitoring lists and networks is about the only current alternative."
Re:There is no cleanup anymore (Score:4, Insightful)
Throw out 2 level access control! (Score:3, Insightful)
When you need to install something esoteric then you would have to do some more advanced steps but if you are installing something strange then you probably know what you are doing anyway.
This could maybe be combined with some sort of trust network. Say your friend installs something that needs non-standard access rights, they could grant the required permissions and create a new profile. You would have them in your trusted list and would have access to all of their profiles so when you install that application, it can categorise it using the info your friend provided.
I think this system provides a good balance between really fine grained permissions and not blindly clicking through loads of confirmation dialogs.
Alarmist (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a balance to be struck, and "Better safe than sorry" can be answered "better neither than either".