On February 1st (2001), McAfee.com released an alert to the media warning of a reported increase in the APS_Trojan, a password stealing Trojan affecting only AOL members using certain versions of the AOL software. I admit statistics aren't my strong suit, but when looking at the number of subscribers and visitors McAfee reported in a recent press release, and the number of infected files found, I'm left scratching my head wondering if we haven't crossed over into some fairy tale with kids crying wolf and hens warning that the sky is falling.

In a press release dated January 29, 2001 (two days before the warning was issued), McAfee.com reported they had signed up over 520,000 paid subscribers and routinely had more than 350,000 visitors each day. Let's be generous in our layman's statistical analysis of this and assume that only ten percent (.10) of these visitors had a scan while they were there. Now McAfee's reporting that the APS_Trojan alert is based on an increase that's taken place over the last 30 days. Let's multiply that: 350,000 x .10 x 30 = 1,050,000. So even low-balling it, we can probably safely assume that at least 1,050,000 had their systems scanned during this period.

Now let's turn our attention to the rates of infection McAfee is reporting as of Feb 3, 2001. Of the 31 variants of AOL Password Stealing Trojans, McAfee is reporting that of the 78,912,499 files (not computers, but individual files) scanned, 230,497 were infected with some variant of an AOL Password Stealing Trojan. Now we're focusing only on the reports of this particular type of Trojan, so we can make another assumption that this report is dealing with only a very small percentage of the 1,050,000 we determined had their system scanned during the last thirty days at McAfee.com. Of this very small percentage, only .58 (that's just over half of one percent) were infected with any variant of AOL password stealing Trojans.

Now, I'm going to withhold judgement and let readers decide. Do you think this virus alert is justified? Cast your vote in the poll below.