Author: Su Minte Date of submission: 2006-10-512: 57: 00
Speaking of anti-virus engines, there have been two famous figures in the history of computer viruses around the world.
One is Eugene Kaspersky of Russia. From 65438 to 0989, Eugene Kaspersky began to study the phenomenon of computer viruses. From 199 1 to 1997, he led a group of assistants to develop AVP antivirus programs in the information technology center of KAMI, a large Russian computer company. Kaspersky Lab was founded in 1997, with Eugene Kaspersky as one of the founders. In June 2000, AVP was renamed kaspersky anti-virus Software. Eugene Kaspersky is a member of Computer Anti-Virus Researchers Association (CARO), whose members are all top international anti-virus experts. AVP's anti-virus engine and virus database have always been praised by the industry for their rigorous structure and thorough killing ability.
The other is Dr. Solomon. Soloman Doctor Company, which he founded, was once the largest anti-virus enterprise in Europe, and was later merged by McAfee and became part of the largest security trust NAI. At the beginning, McAfee and some anti-virus software companies in Europe often argued with each other, but its anti-virus engine was not excellent, so McAfee stopped using its anti-virus engine and used the engine purchased from Dr. Soloman instead.
Although AVP is the pinnacle of technology, due to laziness in developing the market, there are not many users for a long time, which leads to the loss of some developers. Another Russian anti-virus product, Doctor Web, has a deep relationship with AVP. Among the main developers of Symantec NAV, you can also see Eugene's old department, and some people have jumped to McAfee, but this still cannot change the fact that AVP is the world's top anti-virus engine.
However, due to historical reasons, Eugene Kaspersky finally decided to downplay the name AVP(AntiVirus Tookit Pro) and replace it with KAV(Kaspersky Anti-Virus).
Killing China has ended the anti-virus software market since 1990s, and domestic anti-virus software manufacturers such as Rising, Jiang Min, Jinshan and Jiaotong University Mingtai have gradually dominated most of the market. Crazy price cuts, media hype and lawsuits regarded as outdated by foreign markets have been staged one after another in China. Now, foreign manufacturers want to come in and China manufacturers want to go out, and the relationship between them has begun to struggle.
Shooting the first bird, Jinshan detonated the anti-virus engine, a foreign topic
Since 2002, it has been rumored that Jinshan Company bought the license of Russian Dr.Web engine in September 2000. At that time, the right to use was only signed for one year, and it expired in September of 200 1 year. Later, a report in 2 1 Century Business Herald reported that Kingsoft Internet Security was suspected of pirating anti-virus engines, which made this issue public.
Two competitors of Jinshan Software Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Jinshan), Beijing Rising Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Rising) and Jiang Min Xinke Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Jiang Min Technology), took the lead in speaking out, stating that they had nothing to do with this reported incident. However, the word Rising appeared many times in the report, which made it difficult for Jinshan Company to calm down again, and Jinshan's old and new hatred for Rising, which had accumulated for a long time, also broke out.
Rising Company's evidence comes from a fax from Dr.Web in Russia. The right to use Kingsoft antivirus engine did expire in September of 200 1 year, and Kingsoft Company refused to clarify it to the outside world on the grounds of trade secrets. The progress of the two lawsuits has always been a slipknot, and everything depends on the attitude of Russian Dr.Web
There are different follow-up versions about this matter. One of them is that the top management of Jinshan Company was very angry because of the exposure of the anti-virus engine incident, and sent Wang Tao, the vice president in charge of technology who just took office in June 2002, and Wang Feng, the vice president of marketing, to negotiate with Russia to prepare to renew the contract for next year.
Jinshan Company has always suspected that Rising Company and Russia are jointly exerting pressure, so it is very cautious, and Russia also insists on the price. Since 2003, it has talked with each other for a long time. Recently, news from inside Jinshan said that the date of final renewal is not far away.
Until now, Chen Feizhou, technical director of Kingsoft Internet Security, still uses the title of Chinese head of the Sino-Russian global virus monitoring network allowed when signing the contract. Kingsoft Internet Security, which experienced the blue security revolution and pushed the price of anti-virus software to the bottom, is still on the market.
We have never used it illegally. Wang Feng, vice president of marketing of Jinshan Company, denied the outside statement. At the end of 2000, in order to optimize the anti-virus technology, he began to use dual engines. It is said that plagiarism is due to too much attention. Jinshan is the only company that admits to using foreign engines legally.
In fact, Kingsoft Internet Security once developed its own engine, starting with 1997. At that time, a dozen people didn't take out the beta until April 1999 to be on the safe side. From April 1999 to the end of 2000, Jinshan has been releasing the beta version of Yaobawang for free, and the official version of Yaobawang began to be sold in the market at the end of June 2000.
From 2000 to 200 1 year, the research and development cost of WPS was more than 20 million, and the products sold were also unfavorable. At that time, WPS R&D Group of Jinshan Company was an elite, and wanted to transfer Chen Feizhou, the head of drug Lord R&D, to WPS Group. However, after Chen Feizhou left for a period of time, drug lords began to collapse ... The antivirus engine of drug tyrants was written by Chen Feizhou and rewritten several times.
Jinshan understands that it is not easy to accumulate technology for more than ten years, including the accumulation of samples, which is a process, not to mention virtual machines, a large number of virus feature extraction and removal modules and so on. Independent research and development of anti-virus engine is bound to lag far behind foreign products, so Jinshan invited Liu Jie, who has a thorough analysis of foreign anti-virus products, as a technical consultant. This point has been kept secret by Jinshan, but due to a document leakage incident of Jinshan Finance Department, relevant contract documents were made public on the Internet. According to these data, Jinshan received virus samples accumulated by Liu Jie and other support.
During the period from 1999 to 2000, Jinshan Company found that many users used two sets of antivirus software, including Norton and PC-cillin, which are popular internationally. Finally, Lei Jun, president of Jinshan Company, made a decision and used two antivirus engines.
In the process of selecting foreign anti-virus engines, Jinshan Company has negotiated with many foreign manufacturers and signed an agreement with Trend Micro at the earliest. In the original version, it did join the anti-virus engine of the trend product PC-cillin.
At that time, Jinshan Company has been promoting independent research and development, emphasizing intellectual property rights, weighing considerations and concealing this history. The trend is also very low-key, including his own agent Le Yiyang in China.
But at that time, the appearance of a famous cracker SAC in China disrupted the deployment of Jinshan. After comparative analysis, SAC concluded that Jinshan was plagiarized, which made it difficult to distinguish Jinshan, and this matter was known by Le Yiyang, the exclusive agent of Trend China. Why does China have two trend engines? Le Yiyang frequently put pressure on the trend, which accelerated the failure of the initial marriage between Jinshan and the trend. Finally, Jinshan Company switched to the anti-virus engine of Dr.Web. Of course, some technologies of dr.web also came from AVP.
Jinshan Company declared that the anti-virus dual engine belongs to non-overlapping engine. The anti-virus process of the overlay engine is relatively slow. For example, 450 file viruses have been killed, and 900 may be reported, because both engines have checked it again. Jinshan is a non-overlapping engine, and Jinshan and Dr.Web complement each other. The overall anti-virus process of Internet security is faster than other dual-engine software. This also makes Kingsoft Internet Security work hard on the free definition and use of virus database, which is also the secret of Kingsoft Internet Security 2003 lightning antivirus.
Zhengzhou gang stationed in Jiang Min Science and Technology is suspected of using AVP engine.
Some time ago, it was rumored that Wang Jiangmin, known as "Mr. Wang" in the industry, controlled all KFC fast food restaurants in Zhongguancun. According to the reporter's investigation, in fact, Mr. Wang put more energy into the real estate industry. He doesn't sell KFC food either, but KFC has been using the leased property.
Although it has faded out of the rivers and lakes, according to insiders, in fact, Wang did not delegate. Everything in Jiang Min Company has to be approved by Wang Jiangmin, and even the application for overtime pay needs his signature. Wang Jiangmin goes to work at 9 o'clock every day, and after work at 5: 30 in the evening, he is still there, usually one hour late. The whole operation of Jiang Min Company is still under his control, while Jiang Min Company still belongs to one person.
It is understood that Mr. Wang has actually been troubled by viruses for a long time, and the last time was to kill viruses a few years ago.
Jiang Min's floppy disk is made in China, said a person familiar with Jiang Min, but some antivirus software developed by Jiang Min under Windows, including online version and stand-alone version, all have the shadow of AVP.
Jiang Min's own product, namely the KV anti-virus floppy disk marked with the word A in the huge KV product packaging box, is an old version of KV, which was developed by Wang Jiangmin himself. But at present, few people use KV floppy disks to kill viruses unless they do some data repair.
The current anti-virus engine was written by Liu Jie and He He, the developers of Tian98. A long time ago, it was widely rumored in the industry that Xingtian 98 took advantage of the loopholes in AVP antivirus engine products, took out AVP antivirus engine, refined and upgraded the virus database, and then applied it to Jiang Min antivirus engine.
Liu Jie, Wang Leyan and He Gongdao are all from Zhengzhou, Henan. They are famous Zhengzhou gang members in the history of general software in China. Before entering Jiang Min Company, Liu Jie worked as a technical consultant for Jinshan Company for one year. The other two, Wang Leyan and He Gongdao, developed KV3000 and worked for Jiang Min Company a long time ago. Later, Chang Jinxi, the current general manager of Jiang Min, persuaded Wang Jiangmin to come forward personally and invited Liu Jie to join. Liu Jie is now the chief engineer of Jiang Min Company.
A long time ago, the AVP anti-virus engine solution was decrypted in France, and then it was used for reference by anti-virus software in many countries, which made Kaspersky Lab eager to crack down on piracy everywhere. At the same time, with the theft of AVP products becoming more and more frequent, the market share of AVP close relatives products is unprecedentedly high.
In 2002, the wife of Eugene Kaspersky, general manager of Kaspersky Lab, visited Jiang Min Company. The details are unknown, but maybe this is just a courtesy visit. At that time, she was attending a meeting at the Tianjin Virus Testing Center.
However, there are rumors that when AVP first entered China, Jiang Min Company began to panic and at least changed the naming method of the virus.
Only a dozen R&D teams are engaged in virus research and development in Jiang Min Company, which has just undergone personnel adjustment. It is said that He He is the deputy manager of the department, and he is hands-on. The combination of Liu, Wang and He is really brilliant in technology, but for the anti-virus field that has stepped out of the era of personal heroism and has been industrialized, the strategy of introducing stars remains to be evaluated.
The reporter also learned about another version of Jiang Min's anti-virus engine. Liu Jie once cooperated with AVP in research and development. Some virus records of AVP were added by Liu Jie, and AVP privately authorized Liu Jie for a certain period of time.
As far as the existing products of Jiang Min KV are concerned, it is not a simple AVP binary module transplant, and the library is different. There are only two possibilities, either to rewrite the module on the basis of reference, or to obtain source-level authorization as rumored, or to acquiesce in reference, or to cooperate privately.
Interface Jinshan North Korea Dr. An holds up the guardian of the East.
For a long time, in terms of company development and strategic planning, Jiaotong University Mingtai Software Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Mingtai) has been difficult to get rid of the model of imitating Jinshan.
Someone joked that the conquest of Jinshan in the software market and the constant harassment of Mingtai are the characteristic landscapes of the general software industry in China.
Some people say that Jinshan does not need market research, because it does not know what to develop after research, so it will try to crush others by hook or by crook; Mingtai doesn't need market research and doesn't know what to do. He just looked at Jinshan and did what he had to do. Jinshan is a dictionary and Mingtai is a dictionary. Jinshan does fast translation, Mingtai does fast translation; Jinshan is a virus and Mingtai is a virus. The versatility of Mingtai's anti-virus products may be the best explanation of the development status of Mingtai's products.
In the eyes of many people in the industry, Mingtai has never left the impression of a big company, but its operational ability is beyond doubt. In April, 2003, Mingtai President He won the top ten software leaders in China, tied with Microsoft and Oracle Bone Inscriptions. In early spring, employees of Mingtai and Microsoft went to the suburbs of Beijing to plant trees with shovels. Compared with the dangerous moment when the guardian of the East almost died, He, who is at the front of the team, is much more energetic at this moment.
At this time, the stand-alone antivirus engine has been replaced by Dr. An of Korea, and the online version of Dongfang Guardian, an antivirus software product of Jiaotong University Mingtai, has quietly entered the market. It is said that the online version is different from the stand-alone version, using the engine of Spanish Panda Software Company.
It is rumored that 20011Mingtai, who just entered the anti-virus market, acquired Shanghai Chuangyuan, and many technologies of Dongfang Guardian were upgraded and developed on the basis of Chuangyuan Security Star. The source further revealed that although Shanghai Chuangyuan has acquired Nanjing Xinyuan Company, which was separated due to the divorce of executives, and purchased the intellectual property rights of VRV2000 antivirus software, Chuangyuan Safety Star still uses many foreign AVP antivirus engines.
For example, this person said that in the earliest version of Oriental Guardian, the defects in the earlier version of AVP products were inherited, and even some false positives were the same. Mingtai certainly denied this.
Impossible, we have strong R&D strength, and we don't have to rely on foreign engines to survive. In fact, the Oriental Guardian is still a dual engine, said Park Shenggen, vice president of Jiaotong University Mingtai Company and general manager of the Information Security Division. Different from other companies, the cooperation between Mingtai and Dr. An of Korea is based on the long-term development in the future.
When asked about the sensitive issue that Dr. An's anti-virus software recently entered China and Shanghai Chaohua Software represented its products, Park Shenggen said that Dr. An's entry into China did not conflict with Mingtai in essence. Mingtai mainly promotes its own brand, Oriental Guardian. The use of Dr. An's anti-virus engine is not a simple sinicization and plagiarism, but a kind of in-depth technical cooperation. It does not promote Dr. An's brand and rarely publicizes Dr. An.
Park Shenggen said that Oriental Guardian did not use foreign anti-virus engines when it first launched the market. Later, considering entering the Southeast Asian market, the mechanism of domestic viruses and foreign viruses is not the same. Choosing a foreign anti-virus engine is more suitable for the foreign environment, so the dual-engine technology is adopted in its new products.
He believes that Chaohua Software is actually helping Dr. An in South Korea to promote the brand. Different from the cooperation between Mingtai and Dr. An, Chaohua software completely adopts Korean technology, which is equivalent to the China version of Dr. An's products.
Park Shenggen's answer made the engine fog of the Eastern Guardian even more confusing.
When Oriental Guardian was first listed in 2002, some netizens named it Kingsoft Internet Security (Oriental Guardian Edition), because the software interface is very similar to Kingsoft Internet Security, and even some specific functions have the same names.
A friend who knows the experience of Oriental Guardian R&D revealed to reporters that the stand-alone version of Oriental Guardian has nothing to do with Kingsoft Internet Security, and it is not correct to say that Oriental Guardian is a replica of Kingsoft Internet Security. Kingsoft's interface draws lessons from many excellent foreign software, and Kingsoft itself has a strong love for cats, so it is beautifully designed. It is understandable for everyone to learn from Kingsoft's artistic interface style.
The insider also revealed that Mingtai chose Dr. An from South Korea, not because Dr. An's technology is good, but because his license price is cheap. Instead of continuing to risk plagiarism, it is better to choose to spend money to use anti-virus engines authorized by foreign manufacturers.
Where will domestic software go? All parties talk frankly about the intellectual property crisis.
He Wei, general manager of Panda Software (China) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Panda), said in an interview that Panda did not officially authorize the antivirus engine to Mingtai Online Edition. Although a paper agreement was signed before, the other party has not paid the relevant money. If Mingtai's new version contains the anti-virus engine of Panda software, it must be embezzlement.
He explained that Panda Company did not authorize any engine for Jiaotong University Mingtai, but only gave an OEM-like gateway antivirus product of PPS in the online version of Panda to Jiaotong University Mingtai, and the authorization was limited by date. The product also included the panda logo and company logo. He said that because this technology does not belong to the core product of Panda Software, if it is licensed to other manufacturers, it will not have much impact on the market sales of Panda Software.
He believes that the widespread use of foreign anti-virus engines by domestic software companies is related to the low level of research and development of domestic companies. Anti-virus software technology research and development is difficult, one is the need for technical accumulation, and the other is the need for technical team building. If we use foreign technology purely, the sustainability is not enough.
This is not to say that domestic enterprises cannot be completely successful, He Zhitao said. But the difficulty, risk and uncontrollable factors will greatly increase. Unauthorized use of antivirus engines is definitely not recommended, but it should be opposed.
Tan, vice president of Rising Technology Co., Ltd. believes that if some domestic manufacturers do steal foreign anti-virus engines, it is very shameful to do so. Especially when China has joined the WTO and the intellectual property issue has aroused the concern of the whole society, it is shocking and sad that such a thing happened. The intellectual property crisis in anti-virus software industry is really serious. If the infringement and piracy are left unchecked, manufacturers will fight the price war by piracy, which may drag the whole industry to death.
When asked whether Rising has used foreign virus engines, Tan said that Rising's investment in China has enabled it to have the core technologies of antivirus and information security that can compete with international counterparts, and China people who can do well by foreigners can do well without stealing.
He believes that from the development of successful software enterprises abroad, the general law is the same. Domestic enterprises should look for suitable products and market direction, be down-to-earth, do a good job in technology development, and be willing to invest funds and personnel.
If the AVP engine is used by other domestic companies before we launch the product, this is a matter between the relevant domestic companies and software copyright owners, and the headquarters needs to negotiate with them. Cai Shu, deputy general manager of Beijing Yang Leyi Science and Technology Co., Ltd. said that if this happens again after Yang Leyi introduced AVP products to China, Yang Le will investigate it to the end, and now China has a complete and powerful legal backing.
Cai Shu said that Le Yiyang has been out of touch with the sales business of trend products for a long time, but some domestic key users in the financial and power systems industries who use trend products still insist on providing professional anti-virus services. Now Le Yiyang is the exclusive agent of AVP products, with Russian name kaspersky anti-virus and Chinese name registered as Kaspersky in the world. The cooperation between Le Yiyang and Kaspersky Lab in Russia is close and firm.
The reason why Russian anti-virus software is very powerful is that Russia has international top special talents and fine traditions in the field of mathematics and technology. The training of these professionals will not be successful in three or two years.
He said that Yang Leyi Company and Kaspersky Lab are partners. Yang Leyi sells AVP products and provides high-quality and professional services for domestic AVP users, and will spare no effort to safeguard all the interests of AVP products, including copyright, which has been protected by the laws of China government and China, and copyright bureaus all over the country attach great importance to it and are in charge of it.
He further indicated that China's network security product market has great room for development, and he hoped that domestic and foreign enterprises would join hands. We should be patient with the emergence of internationally leading anti-virus software products with independent intellectual property rights in China, and look forward to a better intellectual property protection environment, stronger basic mathematics and scientific research, and constantly cultivate more and more outstanding professionals.
Zhao Zhigang, the chief designer of AV Leach, the world's first packet-level virus filtering engine, and the chief engineer of Antian Lab, believes that many information security fields in China started relatively late compared with foreign countries. If you want to catch up with foreign countries, it is impossible to build a car behind closed doors. You must learn, analyze and learn from it, which must include some means of reverse engineering. This idea is not protected by law. It is different from plagiarism to analyze the mechanism through reverse engineering and then code it yourself. It is also a good route to directly enhance the product capability through cooperation and introduction. As long as it is not directly misappropriating binary modules, it is normal behavior.
Li, a senior system programmer in Antian Lab, pointed out that the reason why it is easy to be cited is not that there is a bug in the antivirus engine, but that the whole engine and library are completely separated from the main program and are skillfully combined by thousands of obj link files, so others can compile the obj files when compiling the program. This is not a loophole, it just shows that the structure of AVP is very good, so the static module inside can be disassembled and reused.
Zheng, a lawyer of Beijing Zhongfu Law Firm, said in an interview with ChinaByte that from a legal point of view, unauthorized theft of foreign anti-virus engines by domestic enterprises involves private international law and should be handled according to China's current copyright law, regulations on computer software protection, multilateral international treaties to which our government is a party (especially the relevant protocols of WTO) and bilateral treaties concluded with other governments.
Generally speaking, the intellectual property crisis is not only a serious problem in China's software industry, but also a considerable crisis in China's high-definition color TV and DVD decoding technology.
From a technical point of view, if China's anti-virus software lacks its own independent intellectual property rights in the core technology, then the development of anti-virus technology in China will be restricted by others.
It can be seen from two aspects that domestic enterprises steal foreign anti-virus engines without authorization:
First, in the case that foreign anti-virus engines do not enjoy copyright, it is not an infringement for Chinese domestic enterprises to steal foreign anti-virus engines without authorization. Because foreign countries have a long history of protecting computer software, such cases are rare.
Second, in the case that foreign anti-virus engines enjoy copyright (especially in China), it is an infringement for domestic enterprises to steal foreign anti-virus engines without authorization. If the circumstances are serious, the responsible person will bear criminal responsibility.
Lawyer Zheng believes that China enterprises and foreign enterprises are still in a weak position in intellectual property litigation. On the one hand, China enterprises do not have their own intellectual property rights in many fields, which makes China enterprises inherently inadequate; On the other hand, their legal awareness is not strong, and they do not pay attention to protecting their intellectual property rights, such as copyright registration and judicial relief.
The main way to avoid copyright disputes is to obtain copyright. On the one hand, we must develop independently and have our own intellectual property rights; On the other hand, you can also buy copyright. It is also an expedient measure to conclude a reasonable copyright licensing contract to obtain the right to use.
From the legal point of view, the sword of Damocles is always hanging high, which seriously restricts the development of China's software industry. In order to avoid the hidden dangers of intellectual property disputes, domestic enterprises must have ways to deal with them, no matter what the mystery behind them is.