4 ms·

You're being facetious, correct?

• enraged_camel 14y ago
  On the one hand, he must be facetious. Viruses existed long before Windows as an operating system was even conceptualized. Therefore it is ridiculous to claim that anti-virus software exists because of Windows alone. On the other hand, it is true that anti-virus software became a lot more popular as Windows gained market-share. The reason is simple: as we all know, for a long time Microsoft did not take security very seriously. They essentially followed what seems to be Adobe's current philosophy, which is "release first, secure later." Remember that it was only relatively recently that they started to rigorously plug holes on a very short turnaround (mostly weekly if not shorter). So it is not difficult to conceive of a perspective where anti-virus software existed (and still does) mostly to overcome some of the shortcomings of the OS.
  • zanny 14y ago
    I wouldn't call if facetious because today, the only reason any AV exists is because other software failed to sanitize itself against rogue agents. Viruses aren't some mystery or magic, you have to actively engage with a server that sends one to you (be it by actively engaging with the server, or having a vulnerable point of entry and a bad firewall), and either through vulnerabilities in the applications interacting over IP stacks, or through user ignorance in explicitly running a virus manually (and with enough escalated system privilege to do damage). It is easier to whitelist than blacklist. It is stupidly easy to embed a cipher in a binary, encrypt the actual payload, and have the execution context decode it back into its viral form. If you do that, you can tweak a knob, get an entirely different looking binary, and keep shipping out the same virus over and over.