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McAfee quarantines svchost.exe on millions of WinXP machines worldwide

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Re: McAfee quarantines svchost.exe on millions of WinXP machines worldwide

#11

Post by cynicalkane »

dsplittgerber wrote: post #3

If I were a trader, I'd short McAfee right now. This probably means lots of settlements. EDIT: This could actually be a profitable venture. Somewith with at least basic HN-type knowledge and a daytrading account could make serious money. Finance professionals most probably have no idea how important specific IT news are during the day. One should be able to trade ahead of consensus pretty easily.

You'd be making a trade based on how the market responds to news. Just because you care about this news doesn't mean the market will. Unless the settlements are enormous, the market never will.

Re: McAfee quarantines svchost.exe on millions of WinXP machines worldwide

#12

Post by goodmitton »

jswinghammer wrote: post #8

I don't understand why people install antivirus software on their machines. I read once that their catch rate is something like 20-30% which strikes me as no better than 0% for all the good it does most of their customers. It just seems to slow down computers a lot and yield little benefit other than protection for the IT staff when things go wrong. I could make antivirus software that does nothing and probably make…

I don't understand how even having a 20% detection rate isn't better than 0%. Am I missing something? Are there a lot of viruses popping over the net that even the 20% detection is already too late?

Re: McAfee quarantines svchost.exe on millions of WinXP machines worldwide

#13

Post by bshep »

dsplittgerber wrote: post #3

If I were a trader, I'd short McAfee right now. This probably means lots of settlements. EDIT: This could actually be a profitable venture. Somewith with at least basic HN-type knowledge and a daytrading account could make serious money. Finance professionals most probably have no idea how important specific IT news are during the day. One should be able to trade ahead of consensus pretty easily.

Really tempted to do this...

Re: McAfee quarantines svchost.exe on millions of WinXP machines worldwide

#14

Post by jswinghammer »

goodmitton wrote: post #12
jswinghammer wrote: post #8

I don't understand why people install antivirus software on their machines. I read once that their catch rate is something like 20-30% which strikes me as no better than 0% for all the good it does most of their customers. It just seems to slow down computers a lot and yield little benefit other than protection for the IT staff when things go wrong. I could make antivirus software that does nothing and probably make…

I don't understand how even having a 20% detection rate isn't better than 0%. Am I missing something? Are there a lot of viruses popping over the net that even the 20% detection is already too late?

Given the cost in equipment purchases, user annoyance, lost productivity and purchasing the software itself it strikes me that you need much higher success rates to be worth all that.

Re: McAfee quarantines svchost.exe on millions of WinXP machines worldwide

#16

Post by dsplittgerber »

cynicalkane wrote: post #11
dsplittgerber wrote: post #3

If I were a trader, I'd short McAfee right now. This probably means lots of settlements. EDIT: This could actually be a profitable venture. Somewith with at least basic HN-type knowledge and a daytrading account could make serious money. Finance professionals most probably have no idea how important specific IT news are during the day. One should be able to trade ahead of consensus pretty easily.

You'd be making a trade based on how the market responds to news. Just because you care about this news doesn't mean the market will. Unless the settlements are enormous, the market never will.

You have a point. Their market cap still dropped by 50 million in the last 40 minutes - whilst not being enormous, it's still noteworthy so far.

Re: McAfee quarantines svchost.exe on millions of WinXP machines worldwide

#17

Post by andreyf »

cynicalkane wrote: post #11
dsplittgerber wrote: post #3

If I were a trader, I'd short McAfee right now. This probably means lots of settlements. EDIT: This could actually be a profitable venture. Somewith with at least basic HN-type knowledge and a daytrading account could make serious money. Finance professionals most probably have no idea how important specific IT news are during the day. One should be able to trade ahead of consensus pretty easily.

You'd be making a trade based on how the market responds to news. Just because you care about this news doesn't mean the market will. Unless the settlements are enormous, the market never will.

Unless the settlements are enormous, the market never will.

Or if they lose big clients. My wife tells me all computers in PWC's NYC office are out.

Re: McAfee quarantines svchost.exe on millions of WinXP machines worldwide

#18

Post by maukdaddy »

RevRal wrote: post #9
[deleted] wrote: post #6

[deleted]

> Why do IT depts recommend installing this program? My suspicion is that they need something to spend a lot of money on. That old "more expensive perfume = better" thing, to appease the managers. I could be wrong.

You are.

Despite all of its shortcomings, AV is still pretty effective at blocking crap for non-technical users. Perfect? Of course not. But even a 50% catch rate is better than nothing.

At my current job, we see our fair share of 0-day and too-new-to-be-caught-by-AV stuff. However, we also see a great deal of infections from viruses that are at least 1-2 years old. Even stupid AV can catch viruses that old.

Re: McAfee quarantines svchost.exe on millions of WinXP machines worldwide

#19

Post by awa »

dsplittgerber wrote: post #16
cynicalkane wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be making a trade based on how the market responds to news. Just because you care about this news doesn't mean the market will. Unless the settlements are enormous, the market never will.

You have a point. Their market cap still dropped by 50 million in the last 40 minutes - whilst not being enormous, it's still noteworthy so far.

The stock is just following S&P 500 and not dropping on its own

http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&...

Re: McAfee quarantines svchost.exe on millions of WinXP machines worldwide

#20

Post by dirtbox »

goodmitton wrote: post #12
jswinghammer wrote: post #8

I don't understand why people install antivirus software on their machines. I read once that their catch rate is something like 20-30% which strikes me as no better than 0% for all the good it does most of their customers. It just seems to slow down computers a lot and yield little benefit other than protection for the IT staff when things go wrong. I could make antivirus software that does nothing and probably make…

I don't understand how even having a 20% detection rate isn't better than 0%. Am I missing something? Are there a lot of viruses popping over the net that even the 20% detection is already too late?

The 20% figure that was "once read" about is pure fiction. Any up to date test figures reveal something closer to 99.8% of a 3 million sample testbase for the better AVs.

It's all a bit moot though as before this happened, McAfee was probably worse than anything a PC can get infected with. Now it's gone and proved it beyond any doubt.

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