Re: AV Software (was: Windows 7)

["Lukas Beeler" <lukas.beeler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 21:50, David Gibbs <david@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Maybe ... but how many home users have even heard of a 'proper security policy'?

None, of course :)

It's an educational problem that can't be solved by using technology.
Antivirus programs are a band aid solution, and using other platforms
doesn't solve the problem either (Mac users also randomly download and
execute applications).

The only place where the situation is a bit different is Linux - where
users usually download the applications from a repository and they're
cryptographically signed. But that all goes down the toilet when we
move back to randomly executing stuff downloaded from the internet.

What i want to say: There is no way to solve this using technology -
proper policies und proper user education are key to resolving this
part of the security mess.

Of course there's more, like application exploits (IE comes to mind) -
these can be limited and resolved using user accounts with reduced
privileges (which is implemented in IE7 on Vista, but unfortunately
Firefox still doesn't implement something similar). There's much more
one can do against exploitability than against user stupidity.