Mr. Schouwenberg, who dons the de rigueur ponytail and unshaven face, was wry, witty, sophisticated and authoritative all at the same time, belying his appearance. He presented trends that one might expect from an anti-virus company, indicating that at the beginning of 2007, Kaspersky had 250,000 signatures in its virus database, which had been accumulated over a period of 20 years. By the beginning of 2008, that number had doubled, and had doubled again to well over one million a year later. To date in 2009, the database stood at more than 3 million signatures. Most would interpret this as a damaging and frightening trend, but Mr. Schouwenberg took it to be an indication that the antivirus vendors were indeed doing a great job. Why else would the virus creators be so prolific? If they were meeting with adequate success, they would rely on the old stuff and not be on a continual hamster wheel of innovation. He has a point.
The speaker went on to describe the return of earlier forms of viruses, such as file infectors, and newer exploits such as factory-infected devices, social-network attacks, fraudware, client-side vulnerabilities, blackhat search engine optimization, and so on. With each topic he gave his own interpretation of how and why these exploits evolved, and how one might try to guard against them. Many of the basics were already known to this audience, but Mr. Schouwenberg’s particular perspective was refreshing and informative.
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