TDS-3 Discontinued

[Ice Czar]

If you have purchased TDS-3 its important that you read this
and you are now eligible as a registered user for a free copy of ProcessGuard or Port Explorer, Im going to sticky this for a few days.

TDS Software Line Discontinued
The time for evolution is here ...
27-07-05

On the 22nd July 2005 the decision was made to cease development on TDS. This may seem like a strange thing to do, but it was a decision we wouldn't have made if it wasn't in the best interests of our customers, and there were a variety of factors involved that helped us reach this decision. Please allow us to explain ...

Existing anti-virus scanners improved anti-trojan performance
For a long time anti-virus scanners lagged behind when it came to trojans, but today the leading anti-virus scanners are generally doing as well as, if not better than the anti-trojan scanners, and in many ways even have the upper hand over existing anti-trojan scanners (for example some anti-virus scanners have comprehensive unpacking engines). TDS was initially created because of the poor performance of anti-virus scanners when it came to trojans (in particular remote access trojans), but as they've since 'caught up' the need for anti-trojan scanners is declining.

Declining anti-trojan market
For various reasons, including the improved performance of anti-virus scanners as mentioned, sales in anti-trojan scanners has generally declined over the last year or two. Reduced sales means reduced levels of analysis and detection. Put simply, we don't believe any anti-trojan scanners (TDS included) are doing an adequate job anymore, mainly due to the increasingly vast number of trojans that are being released every day of every week, yet because of reduced sales there's no money available for hiring further analysts, and we will not release software if it does not do a good job.

Extremely expensive to maintain in every sense of the word
TDS is not a conventional program where the programmer develops the program, releases it and then never touches it again. Signature-based scanners (including anti-virus and anti-trojan scanners) require daily maintenance, and consequently they are extremely expensive to maintain both in terms of time, money, and resources. If you assume that one analyst costs exactly $50000 a year, and the program costs exactly $50 (to keep the numbers easy) then that's 1000 sales (or 83 _every month!_) that are needed, and that's just to pay for an analyst (remembering that a programmer is also needed). That's just the financial aspect - there is also the time and resources required, as maintaining scanner software is a fulltime job in itself. It's for these reasons that most anti-trojan scanners are one-man operations, but I can tell you that even with two fulltime TDS workers here we're not able to keep up with all of the trojans that are coming in.

Signature scanning has a place, but is not the way forward
Signature scanning is a method of detecting a known file, often based on the identification of known sequences of bytes that would be unique to that file. As a simple example a worm might have the name of its author embedded in its file, and that could be used as a way to detect that worm, assuming the signature (the authors name in this case) was unique enough. Signature scanning has been around at least since the very first DOS viruses back in the early 80s. Naturally it has evolved since then, but it isn't moving forward at any great pace and it is unlikely there'll be any major improvements with file detection techniques in the next few years at least. There are numerous ways to detect files using such methods, but they all have one serious drawback: they can only detect known files. In other words, to detect a particular virus you need to have a copy of that virus so you can take a signature from it which can be used for detection. In other words, it is reactive security. Some scanners have heuristic detection methods which allow them to detect some unknown viruses, but even these methods are based on data from existing, known viruses. We believe signature scanning will have a place for quite some time to come, but as the levels of malware (viruses, trojans etc) are being released at ever-increasing rates it is becoming more and more unrealistic/impossible to keep track of every single virus and its variants, so we are looking to pursue other technologies. Our ProcessGuard is a good example of this, as it can protect in realtime against a huge variety of process-related attacks (such as stopping trojans killing your security software), and even prevent the installation of drivers (which prevents the installation of kernel rootkits).

The demands of maintaining scanners prevents growth
With TDS consuming two fulltime workers a day there are few resources left for anything else, and customers wouldn't be wrong for thinking that it's unacceptable for one program to prevent the development of many others. If we kept developing TDS that would be all you'd be getting from us - think about how few releases there are from anti-trojan developers. We've chosen to let go of TDS, allowing us to not only update our existing programs but also create many new ones. We're now free to create the software you want.

TDS is just one program, we've got so much more to offer
The day-to-day demands of TDS are so great that they have even hampered the development of TDS4 itself (let alone allowing any time for other software). It's for this reason why there are so few software releases and updates from anti-trojan developers - there's just too much to do on the one program. This is a big burden for us because we pride ourselves on being innovative developers and we have so much more to offer than just one program, yet with the demands of TDS we were unable to do anything else. With TDS off our daily maintenance list we're now free to develop other software to release to you.

High levels of piracy = high bandwidth expense from databases
TDS is one of the most popular anti-trojan scanners ever released, and inevitably this leads to piracy. As a developer piracy is essentially just one of the things we have to deal with (just as fishermen have to deal with rough seas), but in the case of TDS, piracy directly results in expenses for us - not through loss of sales, but from bandwidth due to multi-megabyte daily database updates.

Security is a highly dynamic industry, security businesses must evolve
The cat-and-mouse/good guy vs. bad guy nature of the security industry makes it one of the most dynamic industries in I.T., and consequently businesses _must_ evolve for the sake and security of their customers. The daily demands of TDS were getting too great to allow for any growth, which is a serious problem.

We're here for the long run
This decision was also made because we are here for the long run, and it is clear that anti-trojan scanners aren't. We're not afraid to make the big decisions if it means positive results for our customers, and I can tell you now that there's exciting times ahead!

FREE SOFTWARE offer to TDS3 registered users
We encourage all TDS3 registered users to take advantage of our new special offer! Yes we're giving away FREE licenses to your choice of our award-winning Port Explorer or ProcessGuard. If you already own both of those we'll even create a key for a friend of your choice! Simply email [email protected], and include your registration name, registration email address, and TDS3 keyfile (tds3.kf) for cross-reference authentication.

We thank you for your support and taking the time to read this, and look forward to many decades to come of releasing software to you, our customers. Keep an eye on our website for upcoming releases and updates, and even a new website which is just around the corner!

I certainly got my money's worth out of TDS-3
and can understand the costs of maintaining the signiture base it employed

 

[Ice Czar]

and a bump for the unsticking