> AV software is not a crutch, it's an extra level of defense. The issue is that it's the only "level of defense" which introduces arbitrary non-deterministic

> AV software is not a crutch, it's an extra level of defense. The issue is that it's the only "level of defense" which introduces arbitrary non-deterministic behavior. An executable which correctly follows all the APIs as documented and implemented, and which does nothing malicious, might arbitrarily be denied or even erased, and this behavior changes daily or even hourly due to factors outside the control of the computer's user. Even ASLR, which uses non-determinism in its implementation, doesn't cause non-deterministic behavior when an executable correctly follows the API. And it's also a "level of defense" which famously causes frequent performance issues, to the point that "tell the AV to ignore that folder" is a common recommendation. I wonder how many gigawatts of electricity are wasted daily due to AV software slowing things down. Finally, it's been reported several times that this "level of defense" is often poorly implemented, to the point that it can act as a backdoor to bypass other levels of defense. If you can compromise a parser running as SYSTEM, or even within the kernel, you don't have to worry about all the normal rules which prevents you from running code as SYSTEM or within the kernel. People's dislike of AV software does not come only from some abstract purity ideal; it also come from plenty of negative experiences with it.