On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 at 13:56:47 -0500, jef moskot wrote: > On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Daniel J McDonald wrote: > > are you on the clamav-virusdb mailing list? > > Yes, but it doesn't say whether the viruses are old or new, and looking > them up given the various names used and the quantity of updates is not > very convenient.
But we not always know whether a virus is old or new. Some possible situations in which it's not known: a) none of scanners detects a virus because it's a new one, b) none of scanners detects a virus because it's very little popular, though old, c) some scanners do detect a virus but the vendor hasn't published details about it (especially the date). And, doing detailed survey is time-consuming. Protecting our users, hence adding a signature, is more important than doing a broad study of each virus. We just haven't got so much time. > I'm really just looking for a GENERAL idea. For example, if you had to > explain to the average user what sort of viruses were being added to the > database...is it MOSTLY new ones? MOSTLY old ones? About half and half? And what does it mean "old"? :-) Older than a week? A month? A year? Also, there are viruses, which are "old" (known for quite a long time) but still met in the wild. So, in a "activity" aspect, they are still "not old", still threatening. > Would it be fair to say that when a new update comes out that it has > likely been triggered by a recent discovery? I wouldn't say so. Besides: objectively "recent" or subjectively (for Clamav team) "recent"? :-). -- Tomasz Papszun SysAdm @ TP S.A. Lodz, Poland | And it's only [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.lodz.tpsa.pl/ | ones and zeros. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ClamAV.net/ A GPL virus scanner ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Perforce Software. Perforce is the Fast Software Configuration Management System offering advanced branching capabilities and atomic changes on 50+ platforms. Free Eval! http://www.perforce.com/perforce/loadprog.html _______________________________________________ Clamav-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/clamav-users
