Schneier on Security: The Effectiveness of Air Marshals

schneier.com

23 points·SlyShy··8 comments

Bringing this over to the issue of computer security, I wonder how the number of viruses quarantined by antivirus software compares to the number of system mishaps caused by antivirus software?

or how many CPU-years are wasted by viruses vs. CPU-centuries wasted by anti-viruses.

I often joke that I prefer having a virus than an antivirus, since very often the antivirus program behaves like a virus itself - symptoms: system slowdown, ocassional crashes and loss of data or antivirus-induced bugs, especially for the all-in-one apps with firewall, etc that make you lose a LOT of time.

I haven't had an antivirus on my home PC for years, I only make the occasional online scan, and carefully monitor the startup apps & services (windows pc)

Not to mention developer-years tracking down really obscure bugs that turn out to be caused by a particular AV application.

These days, the CPU cycles aren't where we bear the bulk of the cost of malware running on a machine.

wdym? proportionally to available computing power, probably yes, malware should be on decline as a percentage. but total should still be growing?

do you mean network overhead? I think funny videos from youtube and pirated material is leader here.

I mean the human and economic costs.

The costs of fraud because some malware exposed your passwords. Time spent typing in captchas instead of something useful. Software developers spending time securing their code instead of making useful stuff.

So they measure the efficiency of air marshalls in the number of arrests? Hmm.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com