Report of the Second AVAR Conference by Allan Dyer, Technical Director
AVAR99 Photo
AVAR99 program
The second AVAR (Association of Anti-Virus
Asia Researchers) Conference was held in
Seoul, Korea on the 28 and 29 October, 1999.
There were about 50 participants, and speakers
came from as far as the USA.
Seiji Murakami (JCSR, AVAR Chairman, Japan) and Charles Ahn (Dr. Ahn's Anti-Virus Laboratories
Inc., AVAR Vice Chairman, Korea) opened the conference and welcomed the participants.
Mr. Murakami gave his vision for the development
of AVAR in preventing the spread of and damage
caused by computer viruses by exchanging
information around the Asia Pacific region.
He hoped to see local branches established
in each country to provide local activities
and information. Dr. Ahn highlighted the
importance of real-time exchange of information
to respond to increasing damage caused by
viruses.
Chul Soo Lee (President, Korea Information
Security Agency, Korea) warned of the trend from viruses written
for fun or showing off to cyber-crime. He
said that technical and legal standards were
necessary to prevent this, and the Korean
Government was working on it and they would
help and co-operate with AVAR.
Cho Kyu-Hong (Trend micro Korea) spoke on behalf of Richard Ku (Trend micro,
USA) and described the issues involved in
developing anti-virus software for three
versions of Microsoft Exchange, 5.5, 5.5
SP3 and 2000.
Masaaki Kimura (Ministry of International
Trade and Industry, Japan) talked about security policy and anti-virus
activities in Japan. He covered the guidelines
issued, Japanese law and the growing number
of reports of damage received. He said that
the Japanese Government would contribute
in the fight against viruses and would assist
AVAR.
Allan Dyer (Yui Kee, Hong Kong) addressed the problem of a generation gap
in computer knowledge, which could lead to
children getting into inappropriate computer
activities, including virus writing. He called
for improvements in school curriculums to
include IT ethics, safety and security.
Seok Chul Kwon (HAURI, Korea) reviewed the development of anti-virus technology
and it's future.
Han Tae Kim (Symantec, Korea) looked at virus trends and outlined a digital
immune system.
The second day started with Motoaki Yamamura (Symantec, USA), who demonstrated the increased speed of
spread of worms and discussed the changes
in policies that would be necessary if we
had a new worm every week or every minute.
Chae Ho Lim (Korea Information Security Agency,
Korea) reported on security incident response and
anti-virus activities in Korea. He described
the organisations that exist in Korea, including
CERTCC-KR and CONCERT, their relationships
and connections with similar organisations
abroad. CIH hit Korea particularly badly,
with 160,000 to 240,000 activations; Mr.
Chae described how the incident developed
and the lessons to be learnt.
Motoi Endo (JCSR, Japan) talked about anti-virus policies, the difficulties
of getting users to follow them and some
ideas to help.
Allan Dyer described his experiences in preparing and
teaching a module on viruses and worms for
a course on Information and Internet security.
He suggested that the course material he
prepared, with improvements, could become
the basis of a "common body of knowledge"
for anti-virus professionals.
Closing the conference, Charles Ahn (Dr. Ahn's Anti-Virus Laboratories
Inc., Korea), a medical doctor turned anti-virus researcher
and a famous person in Korea for developing
the first Korean anti-virus software, took
us through the history of computer viruses
in Korea.
The AVAR 2000 conference will be held in
Japan. More information on AVAR can be found
at http://www.aavar.org/