4 ms·

The malware report here says they analyze protection from "malware downloads". If so wouldn't that be the job of an antivirus program? I don't understand why th

by azakai 14y ago

The malware report here says they analyze protection from "malware downloads". If so wouldn't that be the job of an antivirus program? I don't understand why the browser is supposed to do this. If this is basically duplicating what antivirus programs do anyway, then has IE just added some GUI integration with MS's antivirus, and that gives it the good result it gets here? It seems like all browsers will be equally safe given the same antivirus installed on their machine, so the result seems meaningless. Even less clear is the other report, on click fraud. It mentions software running on the client's machine ("click fraud software installation" etc.), so basically we are again talking about malware? And again, wouldn't a program separate from a browser - an antivirus program - be the right tool to handle that? Lists of dangerous URLs are something that browsers can do that antivirus programs can't. But oddly that is not the focus of these reports.

Mythbusters 14y ago
There's a link somebody posted below about how it works: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/05/17/smartscreen-174-application-reputation-in-ie9.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/05/17/smartscreen-17... It's a reputation system for downloads. Sure its something a antimalware can do as well but given that most software/malware gets downloaded these days, makes sense to have something like this in browser
- azakai 14y ago
  I agree the browser should be involved in some way. But wouldn't it be better to have a single antivirus that integrates with your browser, email client, and also scans USB drives you connect? Browsers aren't the only vector of attack, so duplicating an antivirus seems an odd choice. From the article, it sounds like the main benefit of SmartScreen is the quickness. But again, wouldn't it be better to have an antivirus with that performance, and then your entire system would benefit..?

by azakai 14y ago

Mythbusters 14y ago

There's a link somebody posted below about how it works: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/05/17/smartscreen-174-application-reputation-in-ie9.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/05/17/smartscreen-17... It's a reputation system for downloads. Sure its something a antimalware can do as well but given that most software/malware gets downloaded these days, makes sense to have something like this in browser

azakai 14y ago
I agree the browser should be involved in some way. But wouldn't it be better to have a single antivirus that integrates with your browser, email client, and also scans USB drives you connect? Browsers aren't the only vector of attack, so duplicating an antivirus seems an odd choice. From the article, it sounds like the main benefit of SmartScreen is the quickness. But again, wouldn't it be better to have an antivirus with that performance, and then your entire system would benefit..?