Re: Good virus scanner?

In article <uce-35E3F5.08295013112005@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Gregory Weston <uce@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> There are two legitimate reasons to have an anti-malware tool on OS X:
> 1) Any decent one should also catch malware targeting Windows, so if you
> routinely exchange files with Windows users, you can at least not
> contribute to the propagation of their woes.
> 2) You may be required to by some external authority. I, for example,
> used to occasionally log in to my office remotely and one of the
> requirements for that was active, up-to-date anti-virus software on my
> machine. Didn't matter if that machine had no viruses. It was just
> policy and adherence had to be demonstrated quarterly.

These reasons make perfect sense if you assume that adding anti-virus
software to your computer is zero opportunity cost--that is, if the
antivirus software causes no problems itself.

Sadly, with most of the Mac AV software, that's not the case. Norton
Antivirus is particularly bad in this regard; it has a long list of
very, very serious bugs, many of which can actually cause more trouble
than a hypothetical virus.

For example, NAV 9 had a serious and well-known bug which could damage
OS X in such a way that a user could not authenticate as administrator,
meaning the user could not install new software, run Apple Software
Update, and so on. NAV 9 and 10 install kernel extensions which have
been implcated in kernel panics and system freezes on many systems. NAV
10 has serious bugs including one documented bug which can cause Classic
to refuse to start up if it is installed or re-installed after NAV is
installed; a data corruption bug that can cause files saved from Adobe
Photoshop and Adobe Indesign to be corrupted as they are being saved;
and a data-corruption bug that can corrupt Safari's cache under certain
conditions, causing Safari to hang, crash, or freeze.

And, just to add insult to injury, Symantec has twice in the last year
or so released virus signatures for Norton Antivirus which cause it to
incorrectly identify harmless files as a "virus." One of these updates
caused NAV to erroneously identify certain InDesign files as being
viruses; the other, more well-known and serious screwup on Symantec's
part caused NAV to identify the system virtual memory swap file as a
virus, and users who tried to delete this supposed "virus" screwed up
their systems but good.

Put most bluntly, Norton Antivirus is the buggiest and most destructive
single piece of Mac software I have ever encountered.

Even AV products other than the miserable and benighted NAV still have
problems. Virex, for example, can cause errors and problems with large
network file transfers.

And a lightweight, efficient, and free antivirus program such as ClamAV
(which outperformed its commercial competition in PC magazine's tests)
still wastes processor cycles and slows disk access.

So owning an AV product isn't zero-cost; the worst create system
problems and corrupt data, and the best still reduce overall
performance...for no protection whatsoever.

Still, it's hard to fault the AV vendors for making these programs.
Hell, i want to make money by "protecting" people from an imaginary
threat that doesn't exist! Whaddya think, maybe werewolf insurance? Or
cures for the zombie T-virus? :)

As for the requirement to use AV software in a work environment--well,
it has long been known that the IT departments in medium and large
businesses are lazy, ignorant, and incompetent...

--
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, literature, kink:
all at http://www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
.

Relevant Pages

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