The number of programs one must run on his PC in order to feel safe, is becoming a joke! Gone are the days when all that we needed was one anti-virus program. Now it seems that we need anti-virus, anti-spyware, rootkit revealers, worm and trojan removers, anti-hijack, anti-phising, firewall and port blocker products. The more you are aware of the dangers and malicious software roaming the Internet, the more you feel the need to protect yourself and your PC. However, can you be truly safe, or is all that protection just an illusion? Well, it seems that we will soon need anti-security programs to protect us from malicious code found within security software itself!



I mean, what is one supposed to think, when Symantec, one of the most important and most popular security software manufacturer released it's top security suite with a major security vulnerability that the company failed to detect? According to Mark Sussinovich of SysInternals, the same man that detected the DRM rootking in Sony's AudioCD, the Norton Systemworks 2005 and 2006 case also involved a rootkit. Things become even more complicated if we take into account the latest research of performed by Yankee Group and published in BusinessWeek, according to which, software security suites as a whole, become increasingly vulnerable in malware and trojan attacks. In fact, it seems that software security suites are now more vulnerable to attacks than the actual applications they're supposed to be protecting. It appears that crackers enjoy attacking their prime adversaries far more than attacking easy targets!

Immediately after the results of this latest research, Symantec appeared to deny all rumours that it was using the rootkit for suspicious activities, but on the other hand, admited the rootkit was a security risk and later classified it as a characteristic that needed to be re-evaluated. Symantec finally released a patch that fixed the problem. Is this, however, enough for Symantec to re-gain trust from the user community? Who is to guarantee that similar rootkits don't exist in programs by Computer Associates or F-Secure? It seems that any new program you install on your PC can be a potential security hole. And security suites and anti-virus programs are no exception. The more you try to protect youself, the more security programs you'll install and the more security holes you will introduce to your system. Will it ever end? Could it be that instead of trying to get security from software applications, we should get security directly from the OS? Perhaps the next version Windows will render security suites useless. Perhaps OSes like Linux will provide the solution. Only time will tell.

It is a fact that control of information is a long-sought goal by corporations and governments alike. Can anybody be really sure that many of the security holes often discovered have not actually been placed there on purpose?