davidf@cs.hw.ac.uk (David J Ferbrache) (10/05/90)
The saga continues, Three routes are currently open to us within the UK to establish a virus centre similar in remit to the University of Hamburg centre, with some aspects of CERT's remit regarding mainframe system security and WAN/LAN worm propagation, namely: 1. Submit a funding proposal under the Department of Trade and Industry Information engineering directorate project call in December. 2. Submit a collaborative proposal with other European partners for the EEC RACE malicious software grant proposal. 3. Organise a consortia of firms to directly fund such a centre or centres. At the moment I am keen to continue with 1) in collaboration with Sophos, S&S and NCS in the UK. The centre would embrace all aspects of malicious software prevention, analysis and detection, including: a. Providing general advice and information bulletins on malicious software measures and on the trends in viral developments. b. Centralisation of effort to disassemble and analyse malicious software (together with the provision of a repository of viral samples for product evaluation services). c. Provision of a warning and bulletin service at two levels - 1) basic non-technical warnings via electronic media and popular computing publications of detected malicious software. 2) advanced information bulletins to specialist technical publications in the security field, and to organisations requiring detailed analysis. d. Contact point for international information exchange on malicious software issues, in collaboration with similar organisations worldwide. I will ask if Paul Evans (Computers and security) can arrange an informal meeting of interested parties at Compsec. If you (personally) or your organisation are interested in seeing this centre go ahead, please contact me at Compsec 90, London. My thanks to all who have indicated their support for this initiative. Lets hope that the vast duplication of effort currently taking place in analysing viruses and trojan horses can be avoided !! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dave Ferbrache Internet <davidf@cs.hw.ac.uk> Dept of computer science Janet <davidf@uk.ac.hw.cs> Heriot-Watt University UUCP ..!mcvax!hwcs!davidf 79 Grassmarket Telephone +44 31-225-6465 ext 535 Edinburgh, United Kingdom Facsimile +44 31-220-4277 EH1 2HJ BIX/CIX dferbrache - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------