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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.
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
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?
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...
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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?
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!!"
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
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