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Microsoft Plans To Sell Anti-Virus Software
EvilCowzGoMoo writes "From the makers of our favorite OS comes: Anti-Virus! Yes you heard me right. According to an article on Reuters.com Microsoft is developing its own brand of anti-virus software. Asked if that would hurt sales of competing products, such as Network Associates' McAfee and Symantec's Norton family of products, Nash (chief of Microsoft's security business unit) said that Microsoft said that it would sell its anti-virus program as a separate product from Windows, rather than including it in Windows. My only question is: If they can't seem to patch their OS fast enough, what makes them think they can keep their AV software up to date?"
While I'm not certain that I completely trust Microsoft on this, it might make sense to have the antivirus scanner as a part of the OS. Better low-level access, as well as being able to intercept attempts by something like Outlook to execute arbitrary files. Having a unified place to control such actions might help security.
On the other hand, the major effect might just be to introduce a single point of failure/attack. It's certainly possible to argue that the variety of security software in use makes it harder to attack any given system. For evidence, look at the list of processes that the more sophisticated viruses try to stop.
Background: I do not customarily use an on-demand scanner. On occasion, I have loaded up a scanner because of suspicious behavior. My Windows box (patched up to date, firewalled) has had only one virus, a backdoor program that was installed when my daughter clicked a "video clip" that she received in an e-mail, before she understood what a spoofed address was. So I'm not convinced that antivirus software is as necessary as it is built up to be.
I remember your eyes, on the twelfth of July...
what makes them think they can keep their AV software up to date?
It just goes to show you that business isn't about who's right or who's wrong but who can make it sound good.
Asked if that would hurt sales of competing products, such as Network Associates' McAfee and Symantec's Norton family of products, Nash said that Microsoft said that it would sell its anti-virus program as a separate product from Windows, rather than including it in Windows.
So? The same thing that happened to WordPerfect is likely going to happen to NAV.
I am more afraid that MSFT will purposefully allow holes to exist in its OS so that more and more people will buy their AV software. Perhaps that's a bit paranoid but I certainly wouldn't put it past them.
But that would leave Microsoft even more vulnerable to being sued when holes were found in the OS. A virus that hits because both the OS and the Anti-Virus software were defective and made by the same company? It sounds like a lawyer's wet dream.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Conflict of interest.
Will the projected earnings from AV division affect security choices?
In other news, Benson and Hedges plan to open their own crematorium franchise; "You go out smokin'!". Rumours also spread of plans by Mc Donalds to open a gymnasium adjacent to each grease restaurant, and Darl Mc Bride, Steve Balmer and Steve Jobs to co-author book entitled "Altruism: The secret to success!! (subtitled: Empowering your workforce with kindness)"...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
So, what, it deinstalls Windows for you?
PepperHacks - Hacking the Pepper Pad
Sure does present a MASSIVE conflict of interest issue. Let's see... a monopoly... selling stuff to guard their own product from defects.
Reminds me of the Dilbert with the bonus for finding bugs and the comment is "I'm gonna write myself a minivan!"
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
Like all "Great" Microsoft products, they didn't develop anything. They bought someone up and slapped their name on it. http://www.ravantivirus.com/
Extra 10 bonus points on top of that if the virus also deletes the Product Activiation data!
"Hello? Microsoft? I need to re-activate Windows and my anti-virus software so I can clean out this virus..."
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
10 bonus karma points for the first person to write a worm that exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft's AV software!
MS beat us to it. It's called Outlook.
We'll be seeing virus updates that clean and fix the problem before there is even a patch out. What's that? You forgot to renew your yearly subscription? Better pony up or you'll be vulnerable for a long time.
It's just a little scary that a company that is responsible for almost all viruses and worms is now going to benefit financially from such failure to secure their product. They're marketing their shortcomings to you as a new product! What will they think of next?
"Hay Balmer, our anti-virus software sales are slipping lately. Let's add remote scripting capability into solitare."
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Fantastic! When can we expect a Mac version?
"Yeah? And how exactly?"
.dll's would "cripple" Windows.
:D
Make it easily and completely removable and publish the API. Again, during the trial, Microsoft claimed that IE could not be removed because removing those
"If they could do that, then they'd have more than 3 apps that held monopoly status. Frontpage? Nope. IIS? Nope. Exchange? Nope. Media Player? Nope. Gee, I guess their monopoly isn't all that strong unless people actually want their stuff?"
So far, they've only been ruled a monopoly in one market. The desktop x86 market (Windows). Like I said, you need to read more.
It was cute how you tried to toss in two server apps (IIS and Exchange). Hee hee.
Oh well, you Microsoft apologists are all the same.
Does anybody else find this a bit unfair? (Yeah, I know that's M$'s gameplan, but still)
I mean, the only OS which viruses are a major threat is windows.. and now they're going to sell AV software? That just takes the piss in my opinion.
"Hey Bill, we can't possibly fight off all these viruses, surely we'll start losing customers at some point", "Hey, I know! lets sell some Antivirus software, that way we make yet more money and we can get away with releasing patches at an even slower rate, and we get away with terrible programming"...
Microsoft selling Anti-Virus software is like al-Qaida selling life insurance.
And if they are running a Unix variant that attachment will only run at user level. No low level system modification can be made, so you can then log in as another user (or root) and delete said infected files which should all be in their home dir and not mixed in with 10000 .dll files. They should also have to make a little extra effort to get it to run in the first place, which will discourage some percentage of them too.