whitelist Vs. blacklist approach

[baltman]

Why Antivirus Technology Is Ineffective" advocates a whitelist instead of the current blacklist approach.

If it were that easy (profit motives aside) wouldn't it already be the standard?

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=113003W94IYA&page=1

Brian

 

[sggaunt]

IMHO:
The open and free way that computer programs are made (anyone with the knowledge can produce and publish their work) has driven program development and diversity forward since the birth of the personal computer.
If everyone who wrote a computer program had to 'get it passed' and added to this White list, then development would stagnate, and all development would fall into the hands of the 'big players' not a good thing.


Steve [The sane]: Delphi a feersum engin indeed.

 

[eyec]

just read a posting about Greylisting that may be an alternative.

 

[BadBigBen]

IMHO:

The best anti-virus is to use your HEAD...

I will go out on a limb here, but I do believe that 85% or even more, of all corporate infections are due to workers or such opening eMails that carry piggyback deployments of malware... less than 2% actually are due to corporate employees installing software...

Another thing that sprung to mind as I read the Article, they mentioned 'Burglar Alarm', well as in real life sometimes they go off for no reason and false alarms will get them turned off or worse kill the safe-application tripping the wires and basically rendering it down to uselessness ...


Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[pmonett]

The best anti-virus is to use your HEAD

Perfectly true, but unfortunately has not proven very effective.

Must not be very many people with heads on the Internet ;-).

Pascal.


I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.

 

[2ffat]

Here is a problem with the white-list approach when in business. We have people contacting us about our products. If when only allowed people on our white-list to contact us, we would lose a lot of sales.

For home use, a white-list would work but I can't see it working for businesses that need the sales to survive.


James P. Cottingham
-----------------------------------------
^{I'm number 1,229!
I'm number 1,229!}

 

[pmonett]

I've had that same argument with an online journalist on that subject. I really do think that whitelist for personal email accounts would do a world of good.
It is a sad fact that spam works if only one in a million take the bait. That means that 999,999 people get spam because one idiot actually ordered that bottle of Viagra from a dodgy website.
In my opinion, if whitelist email is implemented automatically, then the spammers will see a dramatic drop in the amount of hits they actually make, while normal people will see a dramatic drop in the amount of spam they recieve.
On top of that, add a mail tax for every mail above a hundred per day, and spammers will quickly realize that their business is simply not sustainable any more.
And when spammers abandon the premises, companies will be left with less of a burden on their mail servers. Whitelist filters will gradually be obsoleted, but ready to be put back in place if ever a new spam surge happens. Everybody wins, as far as I can see.

The jounalist didn't agree on the grounds that, if whitelists existed, I couldn't have contacted her to discuss the subject. She obviously overlooked the fact that, as a professional, her professional account would not have a whitelist, so I would be able to contact her.

Pascal.


I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.