The role of antivirus in security

[Steve Kinney]

On 06/16/2017 05:17 AM, Georgi Guninski wrote:
> https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/legal/website-security#
> 
> | (1) Ensure you have anti-virus protection installed, and that it is up to date.
> | (2) Keep your operating system and software up to date as these protect against the latest security threats.
> | (3) Protect your computer with a password and keep the password secret.
> 
> Does (1) makes much sense?
> Does the order (1), (2) make any sense?

inb4 "Microsoft and Security are mutually exclusive."

Now more than ever:  Vault 7 (Assange breaking the CIA's fingers one at
a time by exposing the back doors Microsoft has given them) has already
enabled private sector criminals to up their game significantly and it
ain't over yet.  (Fun project for some enterprising geek:  Compare MS
patches with /subsequent/ Vault 7 releases to see if/when they start
closing back doors in advance of their disclosure by Wikileaks.  Another
and possibly more interesting project:  Find the new back doors
introduced in the same update packages.)

A good back door looks just like a random programming or configuration
error:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130615071200/http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/u-s-agencies-said-to-swap-data-with-thousands-of-firms.html

Given that, and the equally obvious fact that British Airways customers
will not change out their operating systems because a website told them
to, a certain amount of arm-waving as evidence of due diligence will
have to do.  The order in which suggestions are given don't much matter.

:o/



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