Death of antivirus software imminent

Steven M. Bellovin smb at cs.columbia.edu
Thu Jan 3 18:23:33 EST 2008


On Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:52:21 -0500
dan at geer.org wrote:

> The aspect of this that is directly relevant to this
> list is that while "we" have labored to make network
> comms safe in an unsafe transmission medium, the
> world has now reached the point where the odds favor
> the hypothesis that whomever you are talking to is
> themselves already 0wned, i.e., it does not matter if
> the comms are clean when the opponent already owns
> your counterparty.
>
Right -- remember Spaf's famous line about how using strong crypto on
the Internet is like using an armored car to carry money between
someone living in a cardboard shack and someone living on a park bench?

Crypto solves certain problems very well.  Against others, it's worse
than useless -- "worse", because it blocks out friendly IDSs as well as
hostile parties.


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

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