Microsoft’s antivirus team (aka “MSAV”) will soon release their “Codename Morro” free antivirus software. So I asked them for a VIP tour.

They turned me down this time. Say what?

The folks at Microsoft listed “money” as their initial excuse. Seems they just can’t afford to give me a tour in the midst of Great Depression 2.0. I fired back the following reply:

MSAV “can’t afford” my visit? Oh, for God’s sake! I’m a critic, remember? I always buy my own plane ticket, I always find my own place to stay, I always flag down my own taxi. NOBODY IN THE ANTIVIRUS INDUSTRY PAYS MY BILLS.

(Except for meals, which are optional. Jimmy Kuo will confirm we once enjoyed a $4 buffet. I’ll buy my own value meal if you can’t expense a trip to Taco Bell.)

This is a no-brainer. I say “MSAV, please give me a tour and some briefings. Give me an hour to brief your folks in return. No fish or seafood.” They respond “Rob, please arrive on this date for this many days. Bring your PowerPoint slides on a USB stick. Dress code at Bison Steak House is a cowboy hat & boots.”

I’m cheap & easy. Tell MSAV to make this happen.

I then opened a second backchannel to Microsoft. “They’ll make it happen,” I thought. I waited for a positive reply.

Now MSAV cites work overload as their excuse. They really do want me to drop in for visit … but I shouldn’t disturb their intense concentration until “late fall.” In other words: wait six months, then ask again.

Some­thing is wrong when Micro­soft turns away a staunchly pro-Red­mond com­pu­ter secu­rity critic willing to fly in on his own dime for briefings on their new free anti­virus software

This latest rebuff makes no sense, either. We have a saying in the military: “nobody’s too busy to give a dog & pony show.” Especially when school’s out in a region with only three months of great weather.

Something is wrong here, folks. Consider the following:

• I’ve got a history of touring Microsoft’s facilities & giving lectures. They know me.
• They’ve never paid a dime for my visits over the years. (An employee once handed me a dime as a joke when I bragged about this fact.)
• MSAV knows I’m an unabashed fan of Microsoft in general. More to the point: they know I applauded their entry into the marketplace because it would shake up the industry’s then-stagnant antivirus technology.
• My backdoor access to Microsoft’s various security teams dates to 1997 — literally the week after Howard Schmidt joined the firm.
• Microsoft knew the real purpose of the “House 2.0″ antivirus project almost a year before I identified it to the antivirus industry.
• The folks in Redmond still believe I’ve got a very powerful cult following among the American & British & Australian gov’t info-protect agencies.

Only Microsoft sent flowers when my wife passed away. And they know I won’t pitch for a job or a grant. So it should be a no-brainer when I ask them for another visit on my own dime.

This bizarre turn-down forces me to ask a very disturbing question. “What is it about ‘Morro’ that they don’t want me to see?”

You gotta love the world’s innocent and well-meaning Internet users. To hear the computer security experts, the users themselves sometimes rise up as a mob to viciously attack the very foundations of the Internet. And nothing could be more threatening on this day than the inauguration of Barack Obama.

SANS blogger Adrien de Beaupré quotes a colleague who asks if “companies used any counter measures to assure quality of service of their network due to employees utilizing higher amounts of bandwidth” to watch the U.S. inauguration…

SANS blogger Adrien de Beaupré raised his concerns today about innocent and well-meaning Internet users who may have flooded their employers’ and ISPs’ bandwidth by watching the inauguration from their desktops & laptops & iPhones. Beaupré quotes a colleague who asks “have these companies used any counter measures to assure quality of service of their network due to employees utilizing higher amounts of bandwidth due to this great moment in history?”

Beaupré himself questions if we’ll see “overwhelmed 802.11 wireless APs and cell phone services” due solely to those innocent and well-meaning Internet users who threaten the very foundations of the Internet.

“Counter measures”? Good grief, that rolly-polly grandmother is watching the inauguration on her grandson’s iPhone! Tackle her!

Oh, but Beaupré does worry at the end of his blog about the occasional evil entity lurking out there among the vicious mob of innocent and well-meaning users. “[Will we see] new Obama related spam and malware? A new spate of attacks while everyone is paying attention to the event?”

Memo to Adrien de Beaupré: antivirus vendors have long suffered this fate every time virus hysteria strikes. Customers all over the world swarm their websites, either crushing them or causing the antivirus firms to pay big bucks for emergency bandwidth. Yet to the very best of my recollection, the antivirus industry never described their survival tactics as “counter measures.”

Adrien, the rest of the world could learn a valuable lesson the easy way if they studied how antivirus firms deal with the actions of innocent and well-meaning users. Oh, and the rest of the world could learn a valuable lesson the easy way if they studied how antivirus firms avoid viruses…