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Antivirus companies support virus writers?

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JavaJones:
OK, the headline is somewhat sensationalized. Sorry, I couldn't resist. :D I know it sounds crazy, and believe me I don't buy into this, at least not until I see real evidence. But I found some of the points in this blog post to be interesting, if not entirely "compelling" as he claims:
http://dmytry.blogspot.com/2009/12/are-antivirus-companies-main-driving.html

I know the subject has been discussed before; I've even seen it mentioned here on DC in past AV discussions I think. It wouldn't be the first time unethical corporate behavior was responsible for billions of unnecessary spending by consumers. And with the ready availability of obviously less scrupulous off-shore development resources, easily contracted relatively anonymously, it seems all too easy for this to be happening. As opposed to the situation with other businesses like the car tire slashing example given in the post above, where the barrier to accomplishing the stated goal of increasing demand for the product/service would be much higher. Here it's relatively low. Pay some off-shore contractor $10/hr to write virus variants with existing kits = millions of viruses for pennies a piece.

It sounds crazy, but really what's the barrier to this? Legality and morality. If you don't think you'll get caught, legality doesn't matter, and that really seems to be the case with a lot of bad corporate behavior, from "cooking the books" to toxic waste disposal, and much more, some a lot more (physically) harmful than viruses. And morality? Well, since when have corporations had morality? Hmm...

- Oshyan

KynloStephen66515:
Ethically, it would be wrong to commission such software for your companies own benefit, but would you really put it past up and coming developers? Create an anti-virus suite, make your Google tags specifically designed to target the removal of a virus you are having released, then charging the end user to remove it, because you know you will be the only one (to start with) who can remove this effectively.

IMO this type of thing possibly does occur, but until real proof is given, I am happy sitting on the fence, watching both sides.

app103:
I don't believe this is happening, and for one reason:

A shortage of viruses written for the OS that is run by the people with the least amount of sense and the most money to burn: Mac OSX

If an antivirus company was doing this kind of shady thing, don't you think they would have a Mac version of their product and they would be paying people to write stuff targeted at that platform, where they could get away with charging twice the price for their antivirus, and skip providing a basic free version?

And it's not that OSX is so secure that people can't write malware for it, which seems to be the common myth spread by OSX users. And with recent increase in popularity, it's an untapped market for any unscrupulous antivirus vendor that might be doing as this article suggests.

Plus if any of the whole idea of increasing a demand for security products by creating the attacks made any sense, then I guess you could say the same is going on with offline security firms that provide armed guards for banks. Are they staging bank robberies in order to increase the demand for security guards?

Or home security...do they pay people to rob houses in order to sell more alarm systems?

Highly unlikely.

KynloStephen66515:
Although I agree with the fact it is highly unlikely, it is still technically possible that this happens and does go on in some circles.

As an example, there was a computer repair company who basically ran their entire operation on repeat calls, this was because when they fixed a clients computer, they also installed a piece of software onto the target machine which rendered it useless until the correct 'removal tool' was used.

The company DID get caught, but after about 2 years of operating like this.  I will try and find the official news story for this (it was a company local {about 40 miles} to myself).

Certainly proves that this does happen, but on what scale, is anybodies guess.

Bamse:
Who funds all those "tests" you run into when looking for the "best" security software?  8) Is an inbred hysteric industry focused more on marketing than consumer security already, so if conditions suggest help is needed why not produce fuel as well?

Might say NEVER when it comes to bigger companies who have much to lose but there are others. At least one, from China, has been proven to have zero ethics since they stole database from other well known program. Was highly popular at Cnet, any download site. Got caught so we know. Actually still popular but just shows how much you can get away with. Memory is short so risk not that high! Even less if a company is fairly unknown, can't easily be investigated, and try to conquer new markets. Mcafee, Trend etc. can lose it all if they tried something similar. Can't move to China and set up new company in a day.

If one of the old companies get caught I think it would be a rotten apple - will never be proved it was officially decided to fund certain "external consultants" which in fact live in the underworld, heh. Marketing show they have no ethics already but still I would not believe idea of own malware farms. Conspiracy theory, but outside of A-team I would not be so surprised.

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