Virus Bulletin Articles

[Updated 26th June 2015]

Virus Bulletin, once a hard-copy publication and then distributed as a PDF publication, now seems only to publish articles and papers on its blog. The good thing from the reader’s point of view is that the site no longer charges for access to articles and no longer requires registration. 

I don’t guarantee that this is all of my Virus Bulletin articles (actually, there are a couple that aren’t mine but are mostly about me, he said modestly), but they should be in chronological order, unless my concentration has slipped.

Most of the articles published since 2006 (i.e. since I started working with ESET) are also available on the ESET Threat Center articles page (by permission of Virus Bulletin), but not from ESET’s WeLiveSecurity blog and resources page.  Articles published since 2006 or so are also available on Virus Bulletin’s own page in HTML format. The most recent articles are only available to subscribers or for individual purchase. Other articles are only available to registered users of the web site, but registration is free.

While earlier articles aren’t available individually on the VB site, the whole issue for each of those months is available to registered users.

There are direct links here to individual articles, where available, but there are also links to blog articles containing further information as well as a link to the article itself.

• October 1999 “Nine-tenths of the Iceberg – the Hidden Costs of Virus Management” (not available at present except as PDF download of whole October issue).
• April 2000 “Childhood’s End – Demythologising Anti-Virus” (not available at present except as PDF download of whole April issue).
• September 2001 “Sysadmins are Doing it for Themselves” (not available at present except as PDF download of whole September issue).
• January 2002: review by Paul Baccas of Viruses Revealed (my first major book). Not available at present except as PDF download of whole January issue.
• October 2002 Cat-herding (not available at present except as PDF download of whole October issue).
• August 2004: Dirty Mac Brigade Revisited (not available at present except as PDF download of whole August issue).
• July 2006: direct link to article – Hamfighting
• July 2006 (again), a book review: direct link to article – Phish_Fingering
• September 2006 (another book review): direct link to article – War of the Words
• October 2006: direct link to article – AV Testing SANS Virus Creation
• November 2006: direct link to article – I’m OK, you’re not OK
• January 2007: direct link to issue containing autobiographical article – From immunology to heuristics
• November 2007: actually a link to a review by Martin Overton of The AVIEN Malware Defense Guide which I edited and to which I was a major contributor. Direct link to the article: Birds of a feather…
• March 2009: direct link to book review article – Never Mind Having Fun: Are We Safe Yet?
• June 2009: direct link to article – CARO Mio – AMTSO Mon Amour
• January 2010: direct link to article – AMTSOlutely Fabulous
• June 2010: direct link to article –  Pwn2kill, EICAR, and AV: Scientific and Pragmatic Research
• August 2010: direct link to article – Apple pie order?
• September 2010: direct link to article – Chim Chymine: a Lucky Sweep?
• March 2011: direct link to article – Book Review: A Nice Drop of Cocoa
• September 2011: direct link to article – Hearing a PIN Drop
• February 2012: direct link to article –  Living the Meme
• February 2013: direct link to article – Anti-Virus: Last Rites, or Rites of Passage?
• May 2013: direct link to article – Botnets of the Mind. Now available on this site.
• July 2013: not an article by me, but an interview with myself and Lysa Myers, about our forthcoming presentation at Virus Bulletin 2013 (among other things). Direct link – VB2013 speaker spotlight
• February 2014: review of fairly recent eBooks by Sorin Mustaca and Tony Anscombe. Direct link to article reprint: Don’t Forget to Write
• August 2015: Paper: Hype heuristics, signatures and the death of AV (again)

David Harley
Small Blue-Green World
ESET Senior Research Fellow