Saturday, June 29, 2024

MGG - 5.28 - HWYD - Infected

Oh, my brothers and only friends:

Once upon a time I worked for a company that made a security product.  Or service.  It installed in such a way that boot sector infector viruses could definitely be a problem.  In order to test for compatibility, the marketing people were sent out into the world, with instructions to install this piece of software on all the different laptops (relatively new at this point, and the primary market for this product or service) anyone would allow them to.  Because of the potential problems with viruses, they were given a specific antivirus product to test the laptops before installing the software.  I was, at the time, the primary reviewer of antivirus software.  They had been using a common, but not terribly accurate antivirus product: I mandated a superior product.

At one point, they installed the software on a particular laptop, and it didn't work.  The report the marketing guys gave us seemed to indicate the presence of a virus, so I gave them an updated version of the mandated antivirus, and asked them to try again.  They reported that they were still getting the same problem.  So, we asked them to borrow the laptop in question, and bring it in for testing, so that we could figure out what this particular laptop had, or did, that made it a problem candidate.  There was much negotiation, but, finally, they brought the laptop in question in to us.

Of course, the first thing we did was to test it for viruses.  Bells and whistles and flashing lights!  It was infected.  And, when we cleaned off the infection, the software installed just fine.

So, we called in the marketing guys.  Why didn't you test for viruses?

"Oh, we *did* test for viruses!"

You couldn't have.  As soon as we tested, we found a virus.

"Well, we didn't use *your* antivirus.  We used the old antivirus."

Why did you do that?

"Well, when we test with the antivirus you gave us, it finds viruses!"


Some people's kids ...


Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/06/mgg-527-hwyd-80times86.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/07/mgg-529-hwyd-ndas.html

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