Antivirus Firms "Won't Co-operate" With PC-Hacking Dutch Police 97
nk497 writes "Dutch police are set to get the power to hack people's computers or install spyware as part of investigations — but antivirus experts say they won't help police reach their targets. Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure, said the Dutch bill could lead to antivirus firms being asked asked to cooperate with authorities to let an attack reach the target. So far, Hypponen hasn't seen a single antivirus vendor cooperate with such a request, and said his own firm wouldn't want to take part. Purely for business reasons, it doesn't make sense to fail to protect customers and let malware through 'regardless of the source.'"
Re:Google Glasses WARNING (Score:0, Interesting)
i approve of this.
Re:"So far" (Score:5, Interesting)
But the point is, for effective malware, you must disable the AV. When the AV has a known hole, everyone will pretend to be the police. Even if a huristics might cause an issue, once you have it on, you attack the AV first. I remember back in the 90's when AV was starting to mature, most of the "smarter" malware would attack the AV. Even if it couldn't disable it, it would run up CPU and cause false alarms to encourage the user to disable it. Causing holes, no matter how small, will allow someone in who shouldn't be in.
I'd see some lawsuits coming (Score:5, Interesting)
Could you imagine millions of customers asking for their money back when anti-virus software that claims to protect their data intentionally doesn't protect it?