by Saleem Khan, CBC News Online

A third blog post in a row touching on the theme of parasites might seem to be too much – which is why I held off posting this item yesterday. The culprit this time is computer security and antivirus software vendor McAfee Inc.

McAfee launched its official podcast yesterday. The bimonthly show is hosted by the company's Avert Labs staffers security research and communications manager David Marcus and field research engineer Jim Walter.

The podcast's goal, McAfee says, is "to dissect the issues, drivers and trends of security" – something they say they don't always have time to do in the face of dealing with malware threats day-to-day along with other routine security tasks.

From disclosure to zero-day trends to rootkit functionality and everything between, McAfee says its new podcast "will be there to beat that issue into submission with its two opinionated hosts and a variety of the security industry’s finest minds."

They're also clear about what it won't be:

If you are looking for lists of malware and threats, look elsewhere. If you are looking for news on the latest malware in the wild…… sorry, wrong podcast.

If you are, however, looking for highly-caffeinated commentary and heated arguments on the tenets and pillars of the security industry… well then, we got your back.

Where does the parasite theme mentioned at the top of this post come into play, you ask? It's the podcast's unfortunate name: AudioParasitics. Their tag line: "AudioParasitics – Take the red pill."

Clearly, the name is the product of a brainstorming session gone terribly wrong. Whoever came up with it likely meant it as an allusion to an unwanted circuit component but they likely assumed too much. It's especially unfortunate in light of MAfee's recent troubles.

For the few who didn't quite catch the "red pill" reference that the Matrix-philes did [I'm looking at you, Heather] here is the red pill/blue pill scene in context. Or you can just rent the movie.

The first episode of the AudioParasitics podcast covers the Nordea Bank phishing incident and the first of a two-part discussion on information disclosure. You can also subscribe to the AudioParasitics RSS feed.