5 ms·
I don't understand how these antivirus vendors are still in business. Even when they do have marginally better detection rates than the built in solution, the l
by nxc18 10y ago
I don't understand how these antivirus vendors are still in business. Even when they do have marginally better detection rates than the built in solution, the licensing, annoying popups, system slowdown, and security-defeating 'features' make them a losing proposition.
Pre-bundled and even purchased AV is so dramatically deleterious to PC performance that MS should kill it as public service. It gives the entire ecosystem a bad reputation and nowadays is completely unnecessary.
- Nadya 10y agoAntivirus are just another attack vector - and due to their often escalated privileges running on a machine, they are a very attractive attack vector. Not to mention the pitiful detection rate (<50%~ for nearly any antivirus software) makes them nearly useless: once you're pwned, you're pwned.
- btown 10y ago"Microsoft takes its users' security seriously, and it recognizes that third-party antivirus vendors can exacerbate the problem by providing additional vulnerabilities that can be exploited by attackers. Ironically, non-Microsoft software you buy to keep you safe can make you even more vulnerable. To mitigate this, Microsoft is launching a site for white hat penetration testers to report vulnerabilities in antivirus software to a Windows security team, as well as the antivirus vendor itself. If no fix is pushed within 10 business days by the vendor, or a shorter period (at the discretion of the security team) for high-impact vulnerabilities, a subsequent update to Windows Defender will mark that antivirus vendor as insecure, and will provide users the option to disable or uninstall the antivirus software. Vendors requiring additional time to push fixes (for vulnerabilities which have not been exploited in the wild) may purchase a limited reprieve from Microsoft, revenue from which will be used to justify and support this service, as well as to incentivize vulnerability reporters." Bam.
- tedunangst 10y agoBut muh antitrust!
- throwaway91111 10y agoI don't know why you're being downvoted; this is a serious concern other vendors bring up when discussing windows defender (or whatever the free solution is called). At first blush the situation is very similar to I.E. shoving out other competing browsers.
- DannyBee 10y agoAh, but that's only a concern if microsoft has serious marketshare in the market of antivirus. Do they?
- tptacek 10y agoIf people follow the advice of security practitioners, Microsoft will end up with the majority of the market, yes.
- kefka 10y agoSpeaking of... I started my Surface 4 running Windows 10 up last night. The batter applet in the task tray reported, once I started up Chrome: ____________________ "Chrome is is draining your battery faster Switch to Microsoft Edge for up to %%% more browsing time" ____________________ (Evidently, this was first reported in July 2016 http://www.nextpowerup.com/news/29282/windows-10-warns-about-chrome-battery-drain-recommends-edge/ http://www.nextpowerup.com/news/29282/windows-10-warns-about... )
- xorblurb 10y agoPeople with actual knowledge in security, and observing the absurd designs and subsequent holes in 3rd party AV products, are secretly wishing MS do that :p
- tptacek 10y agoThere's no OS feature you can't say this about.
- throwaway91111 10y ago
- fmihaila 10y agoThis is not an actual quote. Using quotation marks for something you are proposing is highly misleading.
- coldtea 10y agoIt's also a highly effective way to present something as coming from a third party, for comedic or other effect.
- halestock 10y agoThey've done a wonderful job convincing the majority of people that anti-virus is something that you absolutely need, full stop. Once you have that ingrained in someone, they'll put up with all the annoyances.
- jonknee 10y ago> They've done a wonderful job convincing the majority of people that anti-virus is something that you absolutely need, full stop. I think Microsoft did that for them by being so terrible at security for so long. Windows Defender came out 5 years after XP shipped and several years after average XP systems were riddled with malware.
- WorldMaker 10y agoMicrosoft had a statute of limitations against shipping anti-virus with the operating system because it was "anti-competitive" according to the EU/DOJ anti-monopoly decisions. Anti-virus wasn't seen as a core security need for an operating system at the time, because the third party AV vendors fought hard for that and used the "Browser Wars" as justification to do that.
- jonknee 10y agoThen they should have made a much more secure operating system. You only need an AV if your OS has already failed.
- WorldMaker 10y agoDepending on your definition of "AV", of course, but: intrusion/threat detection is a need for every modern OS in some capacity regardless of how "secure" the OS is or not. Even if you have the most secure kernel and no threat might ever escape user space, you'll still have pissed off users when they find out their stuff is all up for ransom or deletion. "AV" is a component of a secure operating system, not an "add on" you only need for a "bad operating system".
- 10y ago
- WorldMaker 10y agoThat's part of why I keep pointing new PC buyers to the "Signature Edition" program [1] where Microsoft does forbid pre-bundled AV on PCs sold through that program (at Microsoft Stores and participating Best Buys and other stores if you know to ask). [1] https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/categoryID.69916600 https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/categor...
- amlozano 10y agoI can't wait until retail stores start trying to charge more for signature edition. Pay more for less!
- gumernatorial 10y agoTo be fair, many internet business models operate on the principle of paying to get less garbage (such as ads). And it makes sense from an economic perspective that if you're not being bribed by crapware vendors you'd want to recoup the opportunity cost.
- WorldMaker 10y agoIt's hard to compare Signature Edition models directly to OEM direct models (because OEMs don't want you comparing store-to-store in most cases), but from what research I attempted it did seem like the Signature Edition builds I was examining cost roughly $50-$100 to their direct equivalent the last time I tried to do that math, which seems about what I'd expect crapware vendors are throwing at the PC OEMs to get their stuff installed. (It says a lot about the long term revenue expectations of the crapware vendors if the potential value of a single "trial install" might be worth as much as $100.)
- mablap 10y agoFWIW, I use Kaspersky in a corporate environment with > 250 Macs and I haven't seen any issue thus far. I've seen plenty of HDD failures, fan problems, Chrome hangups, general system slowness due to problems with corrupted preferences and other bening issues, but never ever seen a system slowed down by the AV.
- voltagex_ 10y agoI suspect the "corporate" version of a lot of these AVs are pretty different from the consumer versions.
- fencepost 10y ago>Pre-bundled and even purchased AV is so dramatically deleterious to PC performance that MS should kill it as public service. Ah, so Microsoft would then take the responsibility for preventing malware, and by virtue of preventing the use of third-party solutions make it more likely that they'd be assigned responsibility if sued over losses?
- mtgx 10y agoI agree with the anti-prebundled AV comment. I for one have even disabled Windows Defender on Windows 10. It seems to become just another way of Microsoft tracking you these days. Plus, it's not even that effective as an anti-virus, and anti-virus software is mostly useless as it is (for more tech savvy users). It would probably be even more practical to kill Windows Defender on Windows 10 considering Microsoft makes updates mandatory now - if only it wasn't for the fact that Microsoft gutted its Q&A team and now Windows 10 updates often break your computer, forcing you to wait on the updates before you're sure your notebook can't be bricked or something. It's also annoys me that Microsoft is tying its App Guard sandboxing technique to Windows Defender, when it's completely unnecessary, and it will only make it harder to separate the two in the future, if nothing else for branding's sake.