And a big hand, please, for my EICAR 2011 paper!
This is a paper I presented last week at the EICAR conference in Krems, Austria, on “Security Software & Rogue Economics: New Technology or New Marketing?” Here’s the abstract:
A highlight of the 2009 Virus Bulletin Conference was a panel session on “Free AV vs paid-for AV; Rogue AVs”, chaired by Paul Ducklin. As the title indicates, the discussion was clearly divided into two loosely related topics, but it was perhaps the first indication of a dawning awareness that the security industry has a problem that is only now being acknowledged.
Why is it so hard for the general public to distinguish between the legitimate AV marketing model and the rogue marketing approach used by rogue (fake) security software? Is it because the purveyors of rogue services are so fiendishly clever? Is it simply because the public is dumb? Is it, as many journalists would claim, the difficulty of discriminating between “legitimate” and criminal flavours of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt)? Is the AV marketing model fundamentally flawed? In any case, the security industry needs to do a better job of explaining its business models in a way that clarifies the differences between real and fake anti-malware, and the way in which marketing models follow product architecture.
This doesn’t just mean declining to mimic rogue AV marketing techniques, bad though they are for the industry and for the consumer: it’s an educational initiative, and it involves educating the business user, the end-user, and the people who market and sell products. A security solution is far more than a scanner: it’s a whole process that ranges from technical research and development, through marketing and sales, to post-sales support. But so is a security threat, and rogue applications involve a wide range of skills: not just the technical range associated with a Stuxnet-like, multi-disciplinary tiger team, but the broad skills ranging from development to search engine optimization, to the psychologies of evaluation and ergonomics, to identity and brand theft, to call centre operations that are hard to tell apart from legitimate support schemes, for the technically unsophisticated customer. A complex problem requires a complex and comprehensive solution, incorporating techniques and technologies that take into account the vulnerabilities inherent in the behaviour of criminals, end-users and even prospective customers, rather than focusing entirely on technologies for the detection of malicious binaries.
This paper contrasts existing malicious and legitimate technology and marketing, but also looks at ways in which holistic integration of multi-layered security packages might truly reduce the impact of the current wave of fake applications and services.
David Harley CITP FBCS CISSP
ESET Senior Research Fellow
Small Blue-Green World 