Disconnect of the RAT

When I think back to the early days of the Anti-Virus industry, I recall there were lots of good intentions to standardise, and work as a closed community – but of course, where there are interests of commercial implication, profit, and of course leading edge competitive advantage, there is of course opportunities for disconnect to come into play.

The recent publication of the Shady RAT report would seem to further underpin potentials for such disconnect, as it seems to have, yet again promoted the imposition of the Anti-Malware industry taking up their ‘own’ corporate banners, responding with their ‘own’ opinion, manifesting from Russia, to the US. I guess it is here, where I am looking back to those early days of what was the AV Industry, with the good intentions to work in a closed group to the benefit of their clients, and buying public.

I would however flag up one exception, which in my opinion has gone further than the majority to underpin, what I would consider to be value add focused Security Awareness in the area of malicious code – and here I am referring to one of the early players – The Virus Bulletin (VB).

In my opinion, what makes VB stand out from the rest is their long standing commitment to running national and international events. VB is also committed to an on-going mission to keep the subject of malicious code behaviours current, and high up the research agenda, educating organisations about the threats – and yes, whilst they are of course doing a little self-marketing for their aligned industry partner, nevertheless, that does not deny the competition to have place on the boards to present their ‘own’ opinion, products, applications, and services. Thus here I would conclude they are engaging with the spirit of working within the AV Community close to those early day good intentions.

I believe we are at a juncture of risk that has such significant implications to the wider landscape of security, the place for leveraging a marketing position out of the next latest strain of malicious code should cease. And given the wider implications of malicious code on the end user, business, the economy, not to mention global security, in my opinion, the time has arrived where we should expect the protectors of logic to work with closer unity, looking to protect the public as their first priority, rather than leveraging an opportunity to increase their own individual market share and lines of revenue.

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