Enterprise applications Toolkit

Cult's anti-virus notions laughable - AV industry

Will Knight ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 19 Jul 1999 11:37 BST

After unleashing the Window's "administrative tool" BO2K last week -- itself hit by the CIH virus -- Cult of the Dead Cow, bragged that it is working on two more "security" applications, CDC Protector and CDC System Monitor, in the coming weeks.

The Cult claims that CDC Protector combines signature scanning and application "sandboxing", to offer greater protection from viral attack than any commercial anti-virus software. CDC System Monitor is described as application monitoring application that will allow a user to scrutinise the activity of any program on his or her machine.

"Sir Dystic" author of both solutions says, "We believe current anti-virus software is inadequate. That is part of our message."

Paul Brette, of Finish based anti-virus firm Data Fellows, says: "I can't believe they're actually going to try to go into producing anti-virus software. The learning curve is so high, even at the entry level, that they would have one hell of a hurdle to get over. It's difficult to know what their motives are. If these programmes are supposed to be commercial alternatives, why exactly aren't they giving them away for free?"

Another Anti-Virus expert, Jack Clark, European Product Manager for Dr Solomon anti-virus, is also exasperated by the Cult's claims. "I just can't take them seriously," he says. "Is anyone going to trust them, I certainly wouldn't. My advice to them is to just give up. You're good at generating media hype, but nothing else."