Truth About Computer Security Hysteria
A twelve step program for Antivirus Anonymous
Rob Rosenberger, Vmyths co-founderWednesday, 2 March 2005 LAST NIGHT I lectured at a computer club on why antivirus firms don't get infected. At one point I joked about forming my own "Antivirus Anonymous" chapter. Then, on the drive home, I got this wild idea to compose a twelve step program. I swiped the original twelve steps from Wikipedia and modified them as follows:
- We admitted that we were powerless over antivirus addiction — that our updates had become unmanageable.
- We came to believe that an antivirus technology greater than our own could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our admin privileges over to the care of the Internet as we understood it.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our hard disks.
- Admitted to the Internet, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have the Internet remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked the Internet to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons to whom we had forwarded hoax virus alerts, and become willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- Sought through gamers and pontificators to improve our conscious contact with the Internet, as we understood it, blogging only for knowledge of its will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a digital awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to antivirus addicts, and to practice these principles in all of our affairs.