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Does this product contravene UK consumer protection legislation?

Oldwilliam
This seems to be a very useful software tool for patching/warning the home user about vulnerabilities and about malware such as trojans, but as it's labelled as an "anti-virus" product, and no-one has ever yet demonstrated the existence of a virus for a *nix-based operating system (or else they would have claimed the substantial prize offered for many years by Netproject for infecting a properly-configured Linux box with a virus!), does this product breach UK consumer protection legislation? It certainly claims, by implication, that *nix viruses exist, the truth of which Sophos would have to demonstrate publicly (e.g. to the Advertising Standards Authority) if a complaint was made.
:1000073


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    I don't understand why you are waying that a MacOS virus is an impossible thing. I don't think it is.

    You need to undertake some study on how viruses work, and the mechanisms that they use for self-replication, which is what defines a software virus.  On Unix/Linux operating systems, there just isn't the mechanism for this to happen.  That malware exists for all software is a truism, because all software has vulnerabilities, but *nix operating systems were written from the start as multi-user machines, with the superuser ("root") processes providing services for user processes, and the security model was designed to keep these two separate from the start.

    For greater protection against malware and software vulnerabilities, hardware memory management is a definite bonus, but as there are no mechanisms for self-replication, no virus for *nix has ever been produced.

    Compare that with Windows, which will always only ever be a single-user consumer product that has outgrown its market space, and will always be inherently insecure until re-written from scratch (i.e. never).  By co-incidence, I was just reading today about attacks on Windows CE ATMs - cash machines:

    http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10189

    Madness! There's a number of internet sites that collect photographs of various types of non-PC appliances that run Windows, displaying Windows error messages - it's a hoot!  It even includes giant public displays from the Olympics... how embatrrassing, and easily avoided by using an OS written and developed for real-time utility computing - imagine having to install an anti-virus package on your Walkman or your mobile phone!  And yes, I'm aware that phones running Windows Phone 7 permanently destroy some microSD cards used with them...

    http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/view/859147/#

    http://daimyo.org/bsod

    http://randomfunnypicture.com/funny-fail-pictures/nine-inch-fail-blue-screen-of-death/

    :1000997
Reply
  • 0

    I don't understand why you are waying that a MacOS virus is an impossible thing. I don't think it is.

    You need to undertake some study on how viruses work, and the mechanisms that they use for self-replication, which is what defines a software virus.  On Unix/Linux operating systems, there just isn't the mechanism for this to happen.  That malware exists for all software is a truism, because all software has vulnerabilities, but *nix operating systems were written from the start as multi-user machines, with the superuser ("root") processes providing services for user processes, and the security model was designed to keep these two separate from the start.

    For greater protection against malware and software vulnerabilities, hardware memory management is a definite bonus, but as there are no mechanisms for self-replication, no virus for *nix has ever been produced.

    Compare that with Windows, which will always only ever be a single-user consumer product that has outgrown its market space, and will always be inherently insecure until re-written from scratch (i.e. never).  By co-incidence, I was just reading today about attacks on Windows CE ATMs - cash machines:

    http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10189

    Madness! There's a number of internet sites that collect photographs of various types of non-PC appliances that run Windows, displaying Windows error messages - it's a hoot!  It even includes giant public displays from the Olympics... how embatrrassing, and easily avoided by using an OS written and developed for real-time utility computing - imagine having to install an anti-virus package on your Walkman or your mobile phone!  And yes, I'm aware that phones running Windows Phone 7 permanently destroy some microSD cards used with them...

    http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/view/859147/#

    http://daimyo.org/bsod

    http://randomfunnypicture.com/funny-fail-pictures/nine-inch-fail-blue-screen-of-death/

    :1000997
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