Malware writing teacher revives old rows

Posted by   Virus Bulletin on   Aug 5, 2008

College instructor claims to be fighting industry monopoly.

As announced to much controversy last year, a course in computer security at Sonoma State University, California, is teaching students to write their own viruses, keyloggers, spambots and other malicious software. According to a high-profile piece in Newsweek magazine, the teacher of the course, Dr George Ledin, claims his classes have a specific focus on avoiding detection by security software, as part of a criticism of anti-malware solutions and the industry as a whole.

The Newsweek article quotes Ledin as supporting the 'anti-virus is dead' argument, based on his findings that targeted malware created by his students could avoid detection by traditional scanning techniques. He is also said to believe the industry is scamming consumers, maintaining a monopoly on security software and blocking technological advances.

Ledin plans to publish a book entitled 'Computer Security, Ethics and Society'.

The Newsweek article is online here, with bemused comment on Dr. Ledin's claims from Mary Landesman at about.com here and further analysis of the story in ITWire here.

Posted on 05 August 2008 by Virus Bulletin

twitter.png
fb.png
linkedin.png
hackernews.png
reddit.png

 

Latest posts:

In memoriam: Dr Alan Solomon

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of industry pioneer Dr Alan Solomon earlier this week.

New paper: Nexus Android banking botnet – compromising C&C panels and dissecting mobile AppInjects

In a new paper, researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Bansal provide details of a security vulnerability in the Nexus Android botnet C&C panel that was exploited in order to gather threat intelligence, and present a model of mobile AppInjects.

New paper: Collector-stealer: a Russian origin credential and information extractor

In a new paper, F5 researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Chaturvedi present a 360 analysis of Collector-stealer, a Russian-origin credential and information extractor.

VB2021 localhost videos available on YouTube

VB has made all VB2021 localhost presentations available on the VB YouTube channel, so you can now watch - and share - any part of the conference freely and without registration.

VB2021 localhost is over, but the content is still available to view!

VB2021 localhost - VB's second virtual conference - took place last week, but you can still watch all the presentations.

We have placed cookies on your device in order to improve the functionality of this site, as outlined in our cookies policy. However, you may delete and block all cookies from this site and your use of the site will be unaffected. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to Virus Bulletin's use of data as outlined in our privacy policy.