Fighting malware and spam

Future threats

John Aycock Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary
Alana Maurushat Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales

Research into future security threats is not always taken kindly by all members of the anti-virus community. Understanding the bounds of security research is important, however, when there is an increasing emphasis on proactive rather than reactive defences.

We look at the question of how far security research can go in terms of looking at future threats, and how this research is conducted. Our analysis addresses technical, ethical, and legal issues. The hope is that this will provoke a meaningful discussion on future threat research within the anti-virus community.