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McAfee Points Finger At Open-Source Techniques
Doug Caverly
Staff Writer
2006-07-17
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Open-source software is often thought of in rather soft and cuddly terms. After all, it's free, and usually works to everyone's benefit (or at least tries to). But now, researchers at McAfee have made public their belief that hackers are using open-source tools to their own advantage.
Dave Marcus, a security research and communications manager, spoke to PC Advisor. "Over the last year and a half, we've noticed how bot development in particular has latched on to open-source tools and the open-source development model," he said. These findings will be published in the magazine Sage under the title "Paying a price for the open-source advantage."
But don't get the wrong idea; Marcus isn't badmouthing open-source antivirus products. "They've never been something that was really in the same class as ours," he said, "but we've always been big supporters of open-source antivirus."
Robert McMillan wrote that Marcus did, however, "take issue with security researchers who distribute samples of malicious software, a practice known as full disclosure." Marcus again showed some care in choosing his words.
"We're not taking aim at the open-source movement," he said. "We're talking about the full-disclosure model and how that effectively serves malware development." Putting malware on display can certainly lead to imitations of it, or even tougher versions. But some have pointed out that it's considerably easier for antivirus makers to defend against something when they know what they're up against.
The open-source community hasn't had much time to respond to the McAfee researcher's assertions; the handful of articles I've seen so far on the subject have a collective total of zero comments and replies. It'll be interesting to hear their take on the matter.
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About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SecurityProNews, InternetFinancialNews, SearchNewz, and WebProNews.
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