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29A Issue 02 02 10
Strategic Alliances? Bring 'em on, we love 'em!
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Rajaat / 29A
"Data Fellows Forges Strategic Alliance with Top Anti-Virus
Development Company"
Maybe you have read these headlines on the site of DataFellows, the home of
F-Prot Professional and F-Secure Antivirus and other products (for the cu-
rious amongst you with a browser and internet access, take a look at http:/
/www.datafellows.com). I was really glad to hear this, since I think this
Strategic Alliance can bring forth a very good Antivirus product. Both Da-
taFellows and the AVP team have good programmers, and one of the greatest
virus researchers known in the Antivirus scene. As an end user, this would
be news from heaven.
I started to read on the article, as it was intrigueing...
"Helsinki, Finland/San Jose, Calif. October 1, 1997--Data
Fellows, the European developer of F-PROT Professional, has
formed an exclusive, strategic alliance with another superior
anti-virus technology team: the AVP development team led by
Eugene Kaspersky. Together these companies combine the best
minds in the anti-virus world and are the foundation of the new
revolutionary F-Secure Anti-Virus CounterSign Technology from
Data Fellows. This new CounterSign Technology allows F-Secure
Anti-Virus to be the first line of anti-virus software to
combine multiple virus scanning engines into a single framework
by using both the F-PROT and AVP anti-virus engines
simultaneously."
So they want to combine their engines... That's a great idea! This will be
much more tougher to defeat. There is no doubt we would like to challenge
that product, and try to circumvent it's "excellent" double engine using
scanning technique. Don't forget scanning with 2 engines will also take a-
bout double of the time it would otherwise do. That would make F-Secure An-
tivirus with CounterSign(tm) technology about twice as slow compared to
respective other antivirus products worth their money. Anyway...
"Because the number of viruses in the world is growing at such
an alarming rate, it is nearly impossible for any single
anti-virus product to detect and protect against this threat,"
said Risto Siilasmaa, CEO and Managing Director of Data
Fellows, LTD. "With our new CounterSign technology and this
combination of two superior anti-virus engines such as F-PROT
and AVP, the detection rates of the two engines approaches 100%
and the likelihood a virus would go undetected is less than
ever before."
I like the above paragraph a lot. I do acknowledge the fact that it is in-
deed nearly impossible for any single antivirus product to detect and pro-
tect against the new wave of viruses. So they combine their CounterSign(tm)
technology and "the two superior antivirus engines F-Prot and AVP", and
what do we get??? Again a single antivirus product!
That's right guys. 1 + 1 = 1 in this case ;-)
Stopped laughing yet? Ok...
To be to the point, these antivirus engines combined can result in a really
difficult to beat antivirus product, but there is also a positive side for
us, virus authors. This "Strategic Alliance" also means that in the future
we do have to concentrate on one product less! Yes, they are right in res-
pect that it is harder to beat this combined product, but it will certainly
take less time than testing your virus on 2 completely different products,
let alone the fact that it costs you a lot more time to write retro struc-
tures against 2 antivirus products instead of one.
Afterthought: Should we also take action and form "Strategic Alliances" o-
ther groups? We probably would not benefit from a "single virus engine"...,
but maybe some kind of function library for easy and clean virus writing...
An API? Food for thought and another article I guess :-)
People that want to read the complete story go to:
(*) http://www.datafellows.com/news/pr/f-secure/st-alnc.htm
Rajaat / 29A
