Mikko Hypponen Using Quotations

Nuclear scientists lost their innocence when we used the atom bomb for the very first time. So we could argue computer scientists lost their innocence in 2009 when we started using malware as an offensive attack weapon.

The United States has an unfair advantage, as most of the popular cloud services, search engines, computer and mobile operating systems or web browsers are made by U.S. companies. When the rest of the world uses the net, they are effectively using U.S.-based services, making them a legal target for U.S. intelligence.

I believe in the freedom of the net, but I don't believe in the freedom of the net at the cost of having these online criminal gangs running completely loose and using the freedom of the net to steal everybody's money and take away the trust we have.

We have seen dozens of different attacks using this vulnerability since Dec. 27. One exploits image files and tries to get users to click on them; another is an MSN Messenger worm that will send the worm to people on your buddy list, and we have seen several spam attacks.

Foreigners like me have no privacy rights whatsoever. Yet we keep using U.S.-based services all the time, making us a legal target for gathering and storing our private information. Other countries do surveillance as well. But nobody has the global visibility that United States does.

If you run a Mac right now, you don't need antivirus. If you want to be safer, you should be using software that other people are not using.