Thursday, November 17, 2005

Schneier: the real SONY DRM story is the failure of McAfee, Symantec and Microsoft to catch it

Schneier, the deity of computer security, doesn't think SONY's malign incompetence is the real story. Rather, the real story is that the big name spyware antiviral software companies missed this intrusion.

Dang. I didn't think of that.

Schneier is right. We pay our XP taxes to Symantec and their kin every year -- and they blew it. Completely. Either they knew this was going on and didn't bother to tell us, or they missed it entirely. Both explanations are damning.

So, sure, boycott SONY. But also look to swith away from Symantec, Microsoft, and McAfee. They've disgraced themselves. F-Secure and Sysinternals, by contrast, deserve new attention. The next time my Norton Tax comes due, I'll switch to F-Secure Home instead.

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