Slashdot Mirror
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.
This sounds like something they will bundle with their new version of Exchange server due out later this year.
So which will come sooner, the patch detecting the virus or the patch to fix the hole in the operating system that the virus exploits?
So has MS decided that it's easier to chase the horse down after it escapes of the barn, rather than just closing the barn door?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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!
Watch for Microsoft operating systems to be more prone to virii in the future.
http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe Better a smartass than a dumbass.
Wasn't Palladium supposed to make Windows boxes virus-free? Why bother buying up an antivirus company when their future plans are to make virus scanners obsolete?
Will it be built-in in the OS? it could be a good thing, but will other competitors take MS to court for being anti-competitive, like Internet Explorer vs Netscape?
I wonder if you can use an anti-virus program to scan for copyrighted files? If used in conjuction with a subscription system, would it be possible for a modified AV program to detect what software you have running and if you have a valid subscription or not.
not to get all paranoid or anything...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
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.
Scanning email for specific viruses is overkill. This solution stops more viruses (read: all of them) with far fewer system resources:
http://qmail.org/qmail-smtpd-viruscan-1.0.patch
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.
cross-platform email virus scanning and spam filtering, integrating with sendmail and postfix on Linux
Is this one way to penetrate Linux server markets and make some money of out it? So even if you switch from Windows to Linux, you might still be paying to MS one way or another.
If this is not just another attempt to suck the air out of the room for everyone but MS I totally missed my guess.
---
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
Dvorak predicted this would happen in a PCMag editorial back in 2001:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,6271,00.asp
His reasoning is fairly sanguine as well - Virus updating over the web gives MS a perfect excuse to connect to your Windows PC and - along with updating your virus software (perhaps daily!) - sniff around to see what apps you have installed, check out any illegal software/music/etc, look for that Linux partition (and corrupt it?)... pretty scary.
MS connecting to your PC daily... Dvorak was right about something... its all just too much at once. Perhaps this article should be under 'Further signs of the apocalypse'?
Here are a couple of harmless words by me, please be constructive with your critisism. I am a padawan nerd after all...
Once again Microsoft do one of their trademark things; shady deals and corporate buyouts. There's no other reason why Microsoft bought this company other than it provided good services on another platform. This doesn't come as a suprise really. Seems to me that lately they're not really satisfied with owning 95%+ of the market.
Never believe in the official word Microsoft give. That's rule number one. Look at the reason why they bought Connectix. The official word was because of the technology they had with running several operating systems on the same computer, or something like that. Well, it becomes even more obvious when you look at the fact that Connectix was the only Windows emulation software on the Mac, backed up by the fact that Microsoft have been lacking on updates for their Mac software recently. In other words, they want to kill Apple.
Why? Seems to me that Microsoft is now doing whatever it can with in legal boundries to finish all the competitive forces. They're now piece by piece peeling the bana of Apple. Before you know it, Microsoft will kill Office for Mac and Apple will die of nothing is done about it.
Infact, didn't Microsoft make an agreement or licencing deal with SCO a couple of months ago right before they started suing companies for stealing their code? Have none of you ever thought of that connection?
In other words... Looks like Microsoft has pulled in to high gear in fear, by doing what they do best: kill the opponents by buying them away.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
... and thinking "It is???"
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
now you can get virus and anti-virus software from the same company.
Avast at http://www.avast.com/index.html
:)
Using it on my Windows XP box and I'm very happy with it, apart from the scary siren and ladies voice that shouts "Warning, Virus Detected" and scares the crap out of you when you're not expecting it
They have a Beta Version for Linux for download.
Jonathan
Duh! Open source is a virus, right? What better way to see who's running Linux than a virus scanner! Of course!
This is significant, because RAV Antivirus was one of the few antivirus products that provided cross-platform email virus scanning
Yes, that's probably the whole point.
Thank God I chose to buy Sophos licenses instead of RAV. For anyone who's looking to replace RAV (on linux, bsd, whatever) check out Sophos. They support a plethora of operating systems, hopefully they won't get bought by M$ too ;)
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?
This once more illustrates that Microsoft is not a real 'technology company'. They buy other, smaller companies and integrate it as a component into their code base. They also do not provide cutting edge technology, they simply wait until a small company has proven to have a good product and then buy out that company. The leading software company for consumer software in the world is nothing more than a rather shallow business model: take the ideas of others, integrate them and sell the stuff. In itself, that's okay, but it feels a bit cheap. Why not being original? Is it all about money and nothing else?
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.
I believe Microsoft will follow RAV's cross platform tradition. The products will be available on all major platforms including Windows 9X, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows CE.
Homer : I reluctantly accept your proposal.
Bill Gates : Well everyone always does. Buy 'em out, boys!
Homer : Hey, what the hell's going on!
Bill Gates : Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks! [insane laughter]
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
So does this mean that you're standing down from your goal of "Secure Computing" to something more akin to "Kinda Almost OurFingersAreCrossed WeKnowMoreThanTheHackers WeAllCarryRabbitsFeet Computing"?
And to think I once believed in you guys.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Or a protection racket?
Sure, we'll sell you an anti-virus, you wouldn't want anything "bad" to happen to your data would you? We'll keep you nice and virus clean. What, you think we put those bugs in there accidently?
I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
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
It was announced today, that after long negotiation, Microsoft has purchased the final remaining piece of intellectual property on Earth, the cyrogenically preserved head of Linus Torvalds...
I've got your sig, right here.
Friend of mine is using RAV in his security appliance based on OpenBSD. Supposedly RAV had realy good licensing terms as compared to other 'professional' AV companies. Anyhow, talk about fate, he finaly dumped MS completely in favor of Open/Free BSD and then a year later MS is back ;-)
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
I thought Microsoft *is* a virus.
When a virus and and antivirus come together, is it like matter and antimatter?
Glad I don't live in Redmond...
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.
I was just having a conversation with a friend about this. The only areas in software Microsoft didn't have a product are Autocad, High End Photo processing (Photoshop) and Anti-virus, (plus some veritical industry apps).
One more category now gone.
Anthony
Did I miss something, or has /. gone almost an entire day without an article on $CO?
My god, how will I live without another forty or fifty threads on how SCO is a bunch of scum-sucking MS agents? (Not that I mind...)
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Well, I've been waiting for this moment for about 10 years. I'm a real big fan of Microsoft Anti-Virus (MSAV). Heck, I've even been getting updates from them ever since (with that coupon on the back of the DOS 6.x User's Manual, remember?). Finally, I can upgrade! Hoooray!!!
another alternative is MailScanner with any of these AV programs
Sophos, McAfee, F-Prot, Command, Kaspersky, Inoculate, Inoculan, Nod32, F-Secure, Panda, RAV, Antivir, ClamAV, Vscan.
Installs basically as a drop in for exim, Postfix, sendmail and ZMailer.
I've been using this with sendmail and the free for personal use version of F-Prot.
it keeps the (possibly multiple) attached AV scanners updated and has internal support for SpamAssassin.
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
Is it really easier to deploy a 3rd-party app than to secure an app/OS?
A virus scanner will block only certain signatures - how many virii use the same core but are recognized as different by scanners?
A simple vulnerability could result in tens if not hundreds different viruses, all exploiting the same hole.
Let's say scanners are updated and catch all the virus variations - the same vulnerability is _still_ present, just waiting for another iteration of the same core.
Just like letting your child at home with a list of people he's not allowed to let in, instead of just locking the door...
I think the move is only political Look, we're really trying to make it look like^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsecure.
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
You know the old saying: when life throws you a curve ball, make lemonade. Or something like that.
I think we all agree that we like multi-platform virus scanning. This just goes to show the biggest advantage of free software: no one can ever take it away from you.
If Microsoft decides to, they can terminate all versions of this product but the Windows versions. If we can get a really effective free alternative, that can never happen. (The very worst thing that can happen is slow updates to the virus definitions.)
I have always thought that anti-virus software was an ideal candidate for free software. Non-coders can easily contribute: whenever they find a virus that the scanner doesn't know, just send it in. (They can find the virus either by using a payware virus scanner, such as Norton Antivirus, or they can find it the hard way by getting it. However they find it, they can send it in.)
Heck, I'd be willing to keep one machine with Windows on it, running Norton, and also run the free scanner on it, just to help out the community.
So, is there a free virus scanner? Yes. Two, actually.
First came OpenAntiVirus. But that project's virus database was last modified in October 2002. The better alternative is ClamAV.
ClamAV is available for a whole bunch of platforms, including Linux and FreeBSD. It can be set up to scan mail on servers. There is a library you can use to add antivirus scanning to your own applications (maybe OpenOffice should do that?).
I hope that lots of people will start running ClamAV, even just as a test project. Remember that you can put ClamAV on as many computers as you want, for free, but you can still buy a few payware virus scanners to hedge your bets if you want to.
If lots of people run ClamAV, and send in viruses that it misses, it should be able to find all the viruses that the payware can find.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I've been using clamav for virus scanning since it appeared in Debian unstable. It is used by amavisd-new for virus scanning and with spamassassin for spam scanning of my incoming (and outgoing) email. Amavisd-new is then integrated with postfix and cyrus-imapd (2.1.x) for my mail server. Works like a champ on a Power Mac 8600/200 with 512MB RAM!
The only problem with using clamav is that it needs more mirrors to distribute the virus definitions. The main virus definition download site was down over this past weekend, I'm guessing because of the BugBear.B worm.
- rav-msft-acquisition.pdf
The gem:-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Make a opensource AV solution but work with norton for it to use their definitions.. software is free norton makes $$ from definition subscriptions and updates..
That way the AV designers work on the product and dont have to worry about providing the tons of manhours required to get the newest updates out within 24 hours or whatever Norton does right now.
This could use any av's signatures norton just came to mind due to it's fast updates IMO.
I talked my boss into letting me build and maintain our company's email server. I used Linux, Postfix and RAV for mail Servers. RAV is incredibly easy to install, configure and maintain. It checks for updates several times per day(cron) and has all the extra stuff like Reverse-DNS, RBL, WBL, and includes anti-spam abilities. It chugs away without adding any perceivable load on the server, yet works perfectly. Best $300 our company spent. Ever.
The part the boss liked the most was NOT using M$ Exchange, which he knew was high-maintenance as far as patches, etc. After 15 months of flawless uptime, one of our new execs(...aka PHB) asked how often mail is backed up. When I told her once a week she said that at her last company they did nightly backups of their Exchange server. Naturally, I didn't miss the opportunity to reply that if they were running that @$%^*&^! mailserver software, it would have to be backed up daily due to all the bugs, half-ass patches, and viruses that are targetting it all the time.
I spoke with RAE Internet on the phone when I was checking out RAV, and they answered the phone on the second ring each time I called. I got superb support each time, with follow-up emails that were detailed enough that I didn't need to ask for an explanation of an answer. When was the last time any of you actually had that positive an experience when making a call to support from a software vendor?
So MS bought them out? Well, I hope the Romanians got a big dumpster full of cash for it. It's worth it. I just don't like the thought of what MS will do to it.
Flash is the Herpes of the Internet.
your.opinion >