4 ms·

Has antivirus always been this sloppy? I recall a time in the 90s/early 2000s where the engineers working on these products were considered the best in the busi

by tjpnz 7y ago

Has antivirus always been this sloppy? I recall a time in the 90s/early 2000s where the engineers working on these products were considered the best in the business.

dathinab 7y ago
Actually yes, in the (old) past they where not only "sloppy" but some (view?) where even malicious in _creating_ a virus which only theire program could handle (but which also didn't do much damage besides annoying the user). Through instead of sloppy I would say it's often more on the line of misguided about what is secure and _overconfident_ about their own skill to write code without security vulnerabilities. And if the are no vulnerabilities no sandboxing is needed right (sarcasm). Through there where and hopefully still are exceptions to this. But don't ask me which ones because I haven't been on Windows for a long time.
- self_awareness 7y ago
  > Actually yes, in the (old) past they where not only "sloppy" but some (view?) where even malicious in _creating_ a virus which only theire program could handle (but which also didn't do much damage besides annoying the user). Do you have any proof for that or you just like bullshtting people so you appear knowledgable?
- heartbeats 7y ago
  > in the (old) past they where not only "sloppy" but some (view?) where even malicious in _creating_ a virus which only theire program could handle (but which also didn't do much damage besides annoying the user). You know what, I don't even care if this is made up, it's a great story anyway. It would be a great plot for a movie. Ivan Vladimirovich is a Soviet computer hacker who creates computer viruses on behalf of AntivirusCorp. One day, he gets a mission that will come to change his life forever...
dtech 7y ago
It seems like quality lowered over time for several reason. 1) free products became popular, reducing revenue, 2) increased automatic updates and better Windows safety models reduced need and 3) Windows defender became decent around Windows 10 so other offerings became redundant.
- woodrowbarlow 7y ago
  it's not just about windows defender becoming decent (although that's certainly a prerequisite). the motivations are more aligned in favor of users when OS providers are also the AV providers. an OS provider wants viruses to be eliminated, because they harm the OS' reputation. a third-party AV provider wants viruses to continue to be a problem, because consumers' fear of viruses drives their revenue. all other factors being equal, if i'm using a microsoft OS, i want a microsoft AV.
bluedino 7y ago
It seems like there are far more people working in the antivirus sector, writing all kinds of different software, so the quality of code has gone done. One example is AV companies writing things like browser plugins that hog memory, or make browsing unusable slow. Another thing to think about is that tons of features that were never added before, are in the products now. Basically being pushed by management because more features = more sales, even if it ends up bloating the product. I remember a few years ago when we were acquired and had to switch AV vendors to McAfee, it made our oldest group of hardware basically unusable (and these were basically kiosk-type machines). The application we were using required IE so we couldn't replace them with Linux machines either.
jeltz 7y ago
They have been this bad since at least the early 2000s. Maybe they were good in the 90s, I was too young back then and did not know enough about computers.
tremon 7y ago
No, back then, compute cycles were a scarce resource, so an antivirus had to be lightweight and targeted. They only started to get sloppy when processors started getting faster than real software had a use for.
armitron 7y ago
AV was always a snakeoil business that always produced low quality products which worked against security by increasing the attack surface and offering low-barrier-to-entry ways to remote code execution.
Godel_unicode 7y ago
The problem has gotten exponentially harder. AV used to be "look for this set of hashes" now it's "dynamically detect this behavior, and oh by the way everything is obfuscated script code not a binary".
_bxg1 7y ago
I think part of the decline is just from its decline in popularity. Less money coming in means lower standards and, in some cases, less-scrupulous business models. Have you seen cable TV in the past five years? It's gone so downhill. Half of the content is still in 480p, awkwardly stretched to wide-screen. Commercial breaks seem like they're twice as frequent as they used to be. Shows being aired have drifted even further into reruns-and-reality-TV territory. Even the content of the ads has shifted somewhat, from recognizable brands to injury attorneys who look like they filmed the ad themselves. You can see the money being drained from the husk of an industry, and you can see the increased desperation as they try to scrape together what money they still can. The same thing is happening with antivirus software.

by tjpnz 7y ago

Has antivirus always been this sloppy? I recall a time in the 90s/early 2000s where the engineers working on these products were considered the best in the business.

dathinab 7y ago

Actually yes, in the (old) past they where not only "sloppy" but some (view?) where even malicious in _creating_ a virus which only theire program could handle (but which also didn't do much damage besides annoying the user). Through instead of sloppy I would say it's often more on the line of misguided about what is secure and _overconfident_ about their own skill to write code without security vulnerabilities. And if the are no vulnerabilities no sandboxing is needed right (sarcasm). Through there where and hopefully still are exceptions to this. But don't ask me which ones because I haven't been on Windows for a long time.

self_awareness 7y ago
> Actually yes, in the (old) past they where not only "sloppy" but some (view?) where even malicious in _creating_ a virus which only theire program could handle (but which also didn't do much damage besides annoying the user). Do you have any proof for that or you just like bullshtting people so you appear knowledgable?
heartbeats 7y ago
> in the (old) past they where not only "sloppy" but some (view?) where even malicious in _creating_ a virus which only theire program could handle (but which also didn't do much damage besides annoying the user). You know what, I don't even care if this is made up, it's a great story anyway. It would be a great plot for a movie. Ivan Vladimirovich is a Soviet computer hacker who creates computer viruses on behalf of AntivirusCorp. One day, he gets a mission that will come to change his life forever...

dtech 7y ago

It seems like quality lowered over time for several reason. 1) free products became popular, reducing revenue, 2) increased automatic updates and better Windows safety models reduced need and 3) Windows defender became decent around Windows 10 so other offerings became redundant.

woodrowbarlow 7y ago
it's not just about windows defender becoming decent (although that's certainly a prerequisite). the motivations are more aligned in favor of users when OS providers are also the AV providers. an OS provider wants viruses to be eliminated, because they harm the OS' reputation. a third-party AV provider wants viruses to continue to be a problem, because consumers' fear of viruses drives their revenue. all other factors being equal, if i'm using a microsoft OS, i want a microsoft AV.

bluedino 7y ago

It seems like there are far more people working in the antivirus sector, writing all kinds of different software, so the quality of code has gone done. One example is AV companies writing things like browser plugins that hog memory, or make browsing unusable slow. Another thing to think about is that tons of features that were never added before, are in the products now. Basically being pushed by management because more features = more sales, even if it ends up bloating the product. I remember a few years ago when we were acquired and had to switch AV vendors to McAfee, it made our oldest group of hardware basically unusable (and these were basically kiosk-type machines). The application we were using required IE so we couldn't replace them with Linux machines either.

jeltz 7y ago

They have been this bad since at least the early 2000s. Maybe they were good in the 90s, I was too young back then and did not know enough about computers.

tremon 7y ago

No, back then, compute cycles were a scarce resource, so an antivirus had to be lightweight and targeted. They only started to get sloppy when processors started getting faster than real software had a use for.

armitron 7y ago

AV was always a snakeoil business that always produced low quality products which worked against security by increasing the attack surface and offering low-barrier-to-entry ways to remote code execution.

Godel_unicode 7y ago

The problem has gotten exponentially harder. AV used to be "look for this set of hashes" now it's "dynamically detect this behavior, and oh by the way everything is obfuscated script code not a binary".

_bxg1 7y ago

I think part of the decline is just from its decline in popularity. Less money coming in means lower standards and, in some cases, less-scrupulous business models. Have you seen cable TV in the past five years? It's gone so downhill. Half of the content is still in 480p, awkwardly stretched to wide-screen. Commercial breaks seem like they're twice as frequent as they used to be. Shows being aired have drifted even further into reruns-and-reality-TV territory. Even the content of the ads has shifted somewhat, from recognizable brands to injury attorneys who look like they filmed the ad themselves. You can see the money being drained from the husk of an industry, and you can see the increased desperation as they try to scrape together what money they still can. The same thing is happening with antivirus software.