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Can you briefly explain about turning off anti-virus? I see that but nothing about why, or why Windows Defender is still ok and how that differs from the genera
by philipodonnell 9y ago
Can you briefly explain about turning off anti-virus? I see that but nothing about why, or why Windows Defender is still ok and how that differs from the general category of anti virus?
Maybe its in your course so you don't want to spill the beans, but all of your other advice seems consistently good, this one could use some more explanation for the uninitiated who have heard the exact opposite for, like, ever. :-)
- 3pt14159 9y agoBecause intelligence agencies buy or hack antivirus software because its access patterns don't look suspicious. Scanning your harddrive and uploading random contents? What AV is supposed to be doing. Windows Defender is different because if Microsoft wants to fuck you and you're using Windows, they already can.
- Anderkent 9y agoThe problem is that many AVs are not tested well, and prone to actually making you more vulnerable by bugs in their analysis code. Basically, think of receiving an email with a malware attachment. If you have good hygiene, you won't open it yourself. But your AV will open it to 'scan' it, and that gives it an opportunity to compromise it. Add the fact that most AV runs with high privileges and is not sandboxes, and this is a pretty bad state.
- UncleMeat 9y agoAV only detects already known malware, and often poorly. As a trade off you are running highly privileged code that fundamentally needs to process untrusted input and is often of low quality. For a high interest target, AV software opens up more holes than it closes.