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I'm curious, can you tell me why Windows Defender is inadequate? I also gather that Microsoft sells an enhanced version for businesses with needs beyond local m

I'm curious, can you tell me why Windows Defender is inadequate? I also gather that Microsoft sells an enhanced version for businesses with needs beyond local machine antivirus.

CWuestefeld 5y ago
I guess that's a fair question, as it does seem to suffice for most people. I have a few reasons: * Extensive use of Chinese sites, which are quite a mess. I think the risks of visiting that part of the Internet are much greater than someone engaged in more typical usage. * Features like firewall are useful for things other than protecting against direct hacks, and I use it to ensure privacy and occasionally even to simulate failures when testing my code. I think that Defender has such a thing, but less sophisticated? * Probably just being more paranoid than most, having lived through an era when less protection was available, and having to un-hack family members. ETA: also, it's good to have a different sort of protection when the majority is all homogeneous. Windows Defender is the obvious high-value target for hackers. Same kind of weakness and monoculture.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  The Windows Defender firewall is pretty sophisticated. I can't imagine what functionality you'd need from a local firewall that it doesn't offer.
  - jabroni_salad 5y ago
    I'm in the space and it's actually pretty rare to see a real 3rd party host-based firewall. Most AV products that have firewall really just offer a different control surface for the built-in windows firewall or iptables.
Maursault 5y ago
I can't speak to its inadequacy, but I can point out that it is obviously unethical for Microsoft to sell a broken operating system and then separately profit from a product that mitigates part of what is broken in Windows. Microsoft now has no incentive to fix Windows, and, in fact, benefits from not fixing it. Seems to me that is a job for Linux, anyway, and this one time Linux fell down on the job and failed utterly, iow, not even Linux can make Windows secure. Does anyone else see the irony of the FCC banning Kaspersky? It is as silly and ineffective as banning viruses and malware. If they had any concern for security as opposed to security theater, they'd ban Windows.
- legalcorrection 5y ago
  That's not really a fair critique. Maybe if this was the year 2000. But modern 'antivirus' isn't about fixing a poorly designed OS. It looks for known malware signatures, detects suspicious activity in other software, and so forth. You need that kind of thing on any platform, especially ones that run a web browser and/or let users install the software of their choice. All of that functionality is available in the free version. The paid version is for managing the security of entire large networks of devices from things like ransomware and advanced persistent threats.
  - Maursault 5y ago
    > That's not really a fair critique.... You need that kind of thing on any platform This is the boilerplate response to the valid complaint that Windows security is a nightmare. While in theory, other platforms (Linux, BSDs, and idk, OS/400, OS/2, etc.) technically can get infected by viruses, in practice, infection on these platforms would be a vanishingly rare oddity, even compared to the also incredibly rare cases of intrusion. That said, every major non-Windows platform in its default install configuration is inherently more secure than a Windows system that has had all of its known default security issues addressed, even those beyond what Windows Defender provides. Windows is not simply a more attractive target for malware authors because it is a more popular platform with a larger install base, it is a more popular target because it is inherently insecure, and we know it is inherently insecure because it would be foolish for anyone to run Windows and access the WWW without first addressing its security issues. It is possible, and likely even probable, that someone could use an unhardened, non-Windows system in its default install configuration for ordinary personal computing for years without ever experiencing the security threats that online Windows users face on a minute by minute basis. But to be fair to Windows, it honestly often is a turnkey solution to whatever office computing needs there be, and without it, information security, as an area of study, as a profession, and as an industry, would not even exist as we know it today. The fact of the matter is that Windows' security issues (and other issues Windows exhibits unrelated to security) creates jobs, and this can not be ignored. Arguably, the jobs Windows creates are more important than the security issues it introduces. Also, to be fair, without C, C++, .NET, Python, Perl, and JavaScript, Windows would probably be 90% more secure, so it is not all Microsoft's fault and, in a sense, some of the problem is beyond their control.

I'm curious, can you tell me why Windows Defender is inadequate? I also gather that Microsoft sells an enhanced version for businesses with needs beyond local machine antivirus.

CWuestefeld 5y ago

I guess that's a fair question, as it does seem to suffice for most people. I have a few reasons: * Extensive use of Chinese sites, which are quite a mess. I think the risks of visiting that part of the Internet are much greater than someone engaged in more typical usage. * Features like firewall are useful for things other than protecting against direct hacks, and I use it to ensure privacy and occasionally even to simulate failures when testing my code. I think that Defender has such a thing, but less sophisticated? * Probably just being more paranoid than most, having lived through an era when less protection was available, and having to un-hack family members. ETA: also, it's good to have a different sort of protection when the majority is all homogeneous. Windows Defender is the obvious high-value target for hackers. Same kind of weakness and monoculture.

jaywalk 5y ago
The Windows Defender firewall is pretty sophisticated. I can't imagine what functionality you'd need from a local firewall that it doesn't offer.
- jabroni_salad 5y ago
  I'm in the space and it's actually pretty rare to see a real 3rd party host-based firewall. Most AV products that have firewall really just offer a different control surface for the built-in windows firewall or iptables.

Maursault 5y ago

I can't speak to its inadequacy, but I can point out that it is obviously unethical for Microsoft to sell a broken operating system and then separately profit from a product that mitigates part of what is broken in Windows. Microsoft now has no incentive to fix Windows, and, in fact, benefits from not fixing it. Seems to me that is a job for Linux, anyway, and this one time Linux fell down on the job and failed utterly, iow, not even Linux can make Windows secure. Does anyone else see the irony of the FCC banning Kaspersky? It is as silly and ineffective as banning viruses and malware. If they had any concern for security as opposed to security theater, they'd ban Windows.

legalcorrection 5y ago
That's not really a fair critique. Maybe if this was the year 2000. But modern 'antivirus' isn't about fixing a poorly designed OS. It looks for known malware signatures, detects suspicious activity in other software, and so forth. You need that kind of thing on any platform, especially ones that run a web browser and/or let users install the software of their choice. All of that functionality is available in the free version. The paid version is for managing the security of entire large networks of devices from things like ransomware and advanced persistent threats.
- Maursault 5y ago
  > That's not really a fair critique.... You need that kind of thing on any platform This is the boilerplate response to the valid complaint that Windows security is a nightmare. While in theory, other platforms (Linux, BSDs, and idk, OS/400, OS/2, etc.) technically can get infected by viruses, in practice, infection on these platforms would be a vanishingly rare oddity, even compared to the also incredibly rare cases of intrusion. That said, every major non-Windows platform in its default install configuration is inherently more secure than a Windows system that has had all of its known default security issues addressed, even those beyond what Windows Defender provides. Windows is not simply a more attractive target for malware authors because it is a more popular platform with a larger install base, it is a more popular target because it is inherently insecure, and we know it is inherently insecure because it would be foolish for anyone to run Windows and access the WWW without first addressing its security issues. It is possible, and likely even probable, that someone could use an unhardened, non-Windows system in its default install configuration for ordinary personal computing for years without ever experiencing the security threats that online Windows users face on a minute by minute basis. But to be fair to Windows, it honestly often is a turnkey solution to whatever office computing needs there be, and without it, information security, as an area of study, as a profession, and as an industry, would not even exist as we know it today. The fact of the matter is that Windows' security issues (and other issues Windows exhibits unrelated to security) creates jobs, and this can not be ignored. Arguably, the jobs Windows creates are more important than the security issues it introduces. Also, to be fair, without C, C++, .NET, Python, Perl, and JavaScript, Windows would probably be 90% more secure, so it is not all Microsoft's fault and, in a sense, some of the problem is beyond their control.