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Microsoft Acquires RAV Antivirus
Webmoth writes "Microsoft has announced the assimilation of RAV Antivirus from GeCAD Software of Romania. This is significant, because RAV Antivirus was one of the few antivirus products that provided cross-platform email virus scanning and spam filtering, integrating with sendmail and postfix on Linux (among others). No word yet on the impact to non-Microsoft users. In the process, they've left RAE Internet, the (former) exclusive U.S. distributor of RAV Antivirus, along with a host of authorized resellers, in the dust."
perhaps this is part of the overall implementation to improve microsoft products that we've seen as of recent.
while the OS is becoming more and more bloated, a virus scanner seems to be one of the things that would actually be a welcome addition.
isn't this the classic example of leveraging the monopoly to take over another area? what sayeth symantec and mcaffee about this?
Connectix - Who made Virtual PC.... cfm?Art icleID=38080
. html
http://www.wininformant.com/Articles/Index
AND RARE - who made games for the Game Cube..
http://cube.ign.com/articles/371/371768p1
I'm sure this isn't a complete list...
Here is a new business strategy:
1. Create product for non-MS platform
2. Sell to MS
3. Profit!
With viruses, Microsoft has ignored them for years - blaming virus writers and people who didn't patch their systems every 30 seconds. Now they have finally awoken to the fact that they have to take some responsibility for abuses of their system due to shoddy programming.
How will Norton, McAfee, etc. survive this? Microsoft will force their product down our throats and will kill more competition.
First VirtualPC, and cease-and-desisting RealPC, now this. Seems Microsoft is intent on continuing their tried and true strategy
1. Find company that sells something that enables use of other platforms besides Wintel/Palladium
2. Purchase said company with change found in Bill's sofa
3. Shut down offending product line
4. Enjoy complete immunity from antitrust regulation in the U.S.
Fortunately, this leads to a great new business model, especially in countries with IP laws that the RIAA finds not-so-friendly:
1. Create a product that enables use of a platform other than Wintel
2. Sell company to Microsoft
3. Dig backup CDR of source code out from behind bookshelf
4. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
Let's now wait and see if Microsoft maintains the RAV Anti-virus for mail servers product for all the non-Microsoft environments. Anyone care to place a wager?
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
AVG Antivirus http://www.grisoft.com Is a free (depending on your country of residence)windows based AV that does not use any spyware and has free updates. It has saved my neck quite a few times. I highly recommend it to anyone who doesn't currently have any protection. So far it appears to have mostly the same features as others such as Norton AV.
> Why bother buying up an antivirus company when their future plans
:)
> are to make virus scanners obsolete?
See also: RAV Antivirus, _multi-platform_
I'm not sure MS does _anything_ that _isn't_ anti-competitive.
Hey I just created this new nail that won't bend when you hit it like a little girl and won't snap when you have to "adjust" what you're nailing with a crowbar! The only problem is the nails require a special hammer to use them
Hey I just created a special hammer that only works with these great new nails! ....
Nearly every major antivirus vendor has a Linux product.
while the OS is becoming more and more bloated, a virus scanner seems to be one of the things that would actually be a welcome addition.
Gee, well I'd like to see the OS an integrated dictionary that could be used by all applications but that would be too much like a useful feature. Why doesn't Microsoft include one? Because it would put a severe dent in sales of Microsoft Word - beyond the spelling checker, there are few killer features in Word that 90 percent of home users will ever want to use.
Let's face it, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are countless features and applets that Microsoft could include in its OS but continually chooses to ignore simply because including them could hurt sales of its other products.
On the other hand, where there is the real threat of a competitor's product gaining a position of near-dominance, or of a product potentially reducing users' reliance on Microsoft products, Microsoft does everything it can to smash the competition and bring them back into the fold. The Netscape/IE browser war is an example of the former, Java and Microsoft's flawed JVM is an example of the latter.
I'm guessing that Microsoft will simply kill off this product. After all, the very words "cross-platform" are considered blasphemy to the folks at Redmond. The last thing it'll do is further develop a product that promotes secure computing on non-Microsoft platforms.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
This is just another example of how the government fucked up in the Anti-trust trial, by not splitting the company into 4 entities and barring them from working together.
MS should be restricted from buying/licensing any existing company or product. Why inovate when we can buy the competion?
Anyone else remember what MS Anti-virus was like back in the days of Win3.11? Their (in)ability to release updates in a timely mannor should give food for thought to those thinking of deploying this.
but I do agree that this will make it easier for them
How will it do that? If MS wanted, they could easily release a patch that uploads anything from your machine to their servers. Nothing an anti-virus maker offers makes that easier or even harder.
So what is the point again?
I think if Microsoft wanted to kill Apple, they would have simply purchased the company back in '97 , rather than cutting an investment-for-software deal. If MS killed Office on Mac, it wouldn't be the end of the world - there are other office/productivity suites for the Mac (Open Office, Apple Works, etc).
Actually, if RAV works on Mac, I would think MS would have every reason to keep it going - and, if it doesn't run on Mac, they would probably try to make a port of it. MS is in the business of selling software. Apple is just another platform in which to do that - and, given the fact that their respective OS' run on different chip architecture, there isn't the same direct competition for MS as there is with Linux.
Regarding Connectix, there's no reason for MS to kill the Mac version there either - actually, it gives MS a chance to let Mac owners run an MS OS on their Macs (which they have to purchase). MS sells software - selling a VirtualPC app w/ a copy of WinXP is a *good thing* to them.
The Linux version of RAV probably is doomed, however... unless MS wants to begin infiltrating the Linux market w/ its software (which seems unlikely) - keeping an anti-virus app around w/ the RAV logo on it would be a low-impact way of delving into the Linux market, while staying slightly under the radar screen.
What they say and what they mean.
What they say:
"Customers told us they needed a safer, more trustworthy computing experience to help combat the threats posed by those who write viruses and malicious code," said Mike Nash, corporate vice president of the Security Business Unit at Microsoft. "This acquisition will help us and our partner antivirus providers further mitigate risks from these threats."
What they mean:
Trustworthy Computing isn't everything we promised. Palladium only addresses security and DRM through encryption, not vulnerabilities. We need outside eyes looking at our problems.
Say:
In addition to developing new solutions, Microsoft will use (embrace) the GeCAD engineering expertise and technology to enhance the Windows® platform and extend support for third-party antivirus vendors so they can provide customers with increasingly secure and comprehensive levels of virus protection.
Mean: We think that this is another market we can exploit. Seeing how we developed this market we can use our monopoly to force out everyone else. Note that they even use 'extend'.
Thoughts:
Well, the problem is that AV tools are only good at preventing a problem from reaching you if you know about it before it reaches you. It doesn't prevent the problem. They help in clean up but after you've been hit. Virus and worm writers are very inventive. They'll find vulnerabilities no one ever thought about.
Predictions: MS will create a new MS AV product like Norton or McAfee. But it will come bundled with their software. Later they'll rewrite Win APIs so that their AV works faster or has more access.
Note the quality of the product is unknown. I would think it will be worse because audits work best when neutral third parties are invovled. By buying this technology, it would seem that over time RAV will lose any edge it has now.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I have done a quick search on this page for two keywords: "Hotmail" and "MSN" when it had already gathered about a hundred responses. No hits!
Has noone thought about the likelihood that Microsoft has bought multiplatform antivirus software to protect their Hotmail/MSN e-mail services, rather than implement it in a desktop OS? Microsoft has been talking for a long time about rental software services, and not moving the actual software to the desktop system, but implementing it behind the webinterface is actually a rather good solution to fighting e-mail born viruses. I don't expect you'll see this software in Windows, ever.
JeR
How about this:
Put aside that it's a virus scanner. What does it really do? It scans all of the files on your systems, and those being transmitted in and out of your system and matches fingerprints of those files to a database.
What's to stop them from tracking all of the files sent in and out of the system under the guise of the virus scanner? It could pop up different messages "This file contains the virus {blah}" or "this is a DRM protected application and is not legal to transfer to your system".
It could piggy back that information in it's virus datafile updates. It would be hard to track becuase all of the things that it would do, it needs to do to be a succesful anti-virus tool.
-Sean
The point is that it would be harder to track what Microsoft was doing if they did it though a tool like an anti-virus program.
What do you expect a virus program to do:
Scan all of the files in your system.
Ok, so it's scanning all of your files, if the anti-virus datafile is encripted how do you know what it's scanning for? Just viruses, are you sure?
Connect to a remote site and request updates
Well, it has to send data to prove it's a currently registered product and deserving of a free update right? So how much data can you encript and compress in to that packet? ("Here is a list of software apps on the system that were downloaded last week xxx xxx xxx")
Connect to a remote site and download new virus definitions
Is it just that, or is it also a list of known ripped off serial numbers/activiation codes. Oops, MSWord has a virus, must quarinteen it to protect your system!
There is a lot you could do, and explain it all away as the normal actions of the anti-virus tool.
-Sean
With the recent rumblings of microsoft releasing a version of Unix, wouldn't it make sense for them to get into this AV company, considering its cross-platform nature?
I can't help it - I'm a 19D.
Why would one send a .doc to another user? Sending RTF (Microsoft Rich Text Format, a textual encoding of .doc) is safer, as RTF cannot carry macros and thus cannot carry macro viruses.
Because SysAds should not be putting lame requirements on their users ("Even though everyone in this office uses MSWord I want you to do a save-as and save the document in a format that doesn't retain all of your information so the e-mail server can handle it"). I'm a SysAd and I think that is bull.
And yes, I know you can go in to Word and tell it to use RTF as it's default format. But then it asks you "Are you sure you don't want to save this in the native format" when you try to do something fancy and "Do you want to change the format of this document" when you are working with something that wasn't saved in RTF.
We should be finding ways to enable the communication, no matter how useless some high and mighty individuals think it is.
-Sean
It's become pretty clear to them that most users don't download windows updates at all. And many of their patches introduce new bugs or hinder functionality.
If they put a virus scanner into the operating system and make it auto-update by default, they can make it very hard for viruses to spread for more than a couple days, with the future possibility of reducing the truthfullness of the claim that all viruses run on Windows.
Another reason for the virus scanner may be to make end users feel more secure with their products, after all the nasty vulnerabilities that have been found and exploited in recent years. Most users who buy a new computer don't buy a piece of antivirus software to go with it.
Why did they buy a virus scanner rather than write one themselves? It's just the Microsoft way, like their street address, 1 Microsoft Way. Purchasing software and extending it allows them to get new software out the door faster, with fewer bugs in the initial release. This business model made them the billionaires they are.
I believe Martha Stewart uses a similar business model. She didn't invent hardly any of the products that are sold under her name, but with her coordination skills she's become a billionaire nonetheless.
The difference in this case is the counterpart.
Both Microsoft and Netscape had to compete about clients and about pages using their extensions to HTML. Winning one side meant winning the other.
But with viruses, if everybody uses MS Antivirus, that doesn't mean that every virus writer will make viruses detectable by MSAV. On the contrary.
The antivirus market is less monopolizable.
The way out I see is if antivirus buyers don't care about actual detection. They could put up with some level of viruses (all in all, there are so many people using Outlook now!) and go with a free inferior MSAV instead of a competing brand.
How do you see it?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Q: Will the next-generation secure computing base stop spam or prevent viruses?
A: Unfortunately, no. Despite some hype in the media, introducing these enhancements to the PC ecosystem will not, in and of itself, stop spam or prevent viruses. However, by using NGSCB technology as a foundation, a number of trust and infrastructure models can be built to help combat spam and viruses in new and effective ways.
Let's look at spam first. There has been plenty of research on techniques to automatically reject spam e-mail or restrict the ability of spammers to generate it in the first place. These techniques include the following:
Systems built on NGSCB architecture could certainly be used to improve signing-required or computation-required regimes, compared with what is possible today on conventional hardware. (The latter is probably more interesting because NGSCB provides facilities that would allow a sender to prove to a recipient that the sender performed a particular computation within the nexus-aware environment.) Clearly, the realm of possibilities for anti-spam measures on PCs designed to the NGSCB architecture is a topic deserving of further study.
With respect to viruses, the contribution from the NGSCB architecture is more straightforward. Since the nexus and NCAs do not interfere with the operation of any program running in the regular Windows environment, everything, including the native OS and viruses, runs there as it does today. Therefore, we are still going to need antivirus monitoring and detection software in Windows as well. However, the nexus and NCAs do provide antivirus software with a secure execution environment that cannot be corrupted by infected code, so an antivirus program built on top of a nexus-aware application could guarantee that it has not been corrupted. This grounding of the antivirus software allows it to bootstrap itself into a guaranteed execution state, something it cannot do today.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
>
And that's precisely the problem I was referring to.
You don't evaluate a system's security by the number of fixes it has; you evaluate it by the number of things that need fixes.
> I know my Linux box at work has 3 or 4 updates every day.
Could you be bothered to list the 93 to 124 updates you got during the past month? I subscribe to my distro's update announcement list, and I don't think I average even 3 or 4 announcements per week, even if you count updates for all the applictations in the distro, including stuff I haven't got installed and stuff that doesn't apply to the OS version or hardware platform that I'm running on.
For example, if I count correctly there have been a total of 115 updates for Red Hat 7.3 in the past 13 months, an average of only about 2 per week, including both security fixes and non-security bugfixes, and including all the applications in the distribution as well as the operating system.
RH9 has a higher rate to date, being a recent major release, but if I count correctly it is still less than one per day, including both security fixes and non-security bug fixes, and including all the applications in the distribution as well as the operating system.
After filtering out the stuff that doesn't actually apply to me (special hardware, uninstalled software), I would guess that on average I actually apply about two updates per month.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
...monopoly violation?
What pisses me off is that John Ashcroft is not going to even look at this.
I say we flood the DOJ server with well thought-out, assertive, non-flame posts about why this is a BAD thing.
I never thought I'd find myself taking the side of symantec on anything.
Wonders will never cease.