Oliver's /dev/null replacement

As some of you may know, FRISK Software had invited professionals from the AV industry and AV testers to attend the “International Antivirus Testing Workshop” this week in Reykjavik. The workshop was held on tuesday and wednesday and I had the chance to attend the second session (in the afternoon) on wednesday, which included a panel discussion. To me the presentation of Prof. Klaus Brunnstein was most interesting and in some respects it would be good if the AV industry would use a “more academic” approach. Indeed it would be highly useful for everyone, if the AV industry and AV testers agreed on some guidelines for testing, so the test results would be comparable and especially more comprehensive. At the moment it seems that competition has priority over the protection of users (yes users, not only particular customers of particular vendors!). Of course a viruslab or the software engineers are not pleased if the test results suggest that their product is so much less effective than a competitor’s. However, the first and foremost priority for us should be the protection of the users and the society – an ideal that was well described by Prof. Brunnstein and to which I subscribe almost entirely.

Oh, and before the title of this blog article is completely pointless, here’s the link to the website with the presentations from the workshop. Enjoy!

// Oliver

PS: AFAIK pictures will follow later today (friday, that is).