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Sneak Peek At Microsoft Anti-Spyware

Posted by timothy on from the takes-one-to-know-one dept.

Ant writes "Broadband Reports mentions Neowin's sneak peek of Microsoft's upcoming anti-spyware software recently acquired community favorite Giant spyware; Microsoft has code-named their re-hashed version of that software 'Atlanta.' It is currently in an internal beta test. There are screenshots of the application in action."

8 of 440 comments (clear)

  1. Ironic methinks. by grub · · Score: 5, Insightful


    At the risk of sounding trollish... I think it's more than a bit ironic that MS is now going to bundle spyware when a good chunk of spyware is installed thanks to bugs within the present code. Why not deal with existing issues first?

    Oh wait, new bells and whistles are good PR and prompt upgrades.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
    1. Re:Ironic methinks. by ack154 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Also, it's hard to keep people from clicking "yes".

      I don't think it's so much clicking "yes" for most people (joe user)... it's more of clicking "go away" on things.

    2. Re:Ironic methinks. by dioscaido · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Have you been missing the stream of patches coming from MS? How are they not dealing with the primary issues?

      Even so, please tell me which pieces of spyware exploit legitimate security holes? The "security hole" they exploit is that users run as admin. Hardly a bug in the OS, just a horrifically misguided ease of use 'feature' in the installer. Easily fixed. I've never gotten infected with spyware while running as a Limited user, and neither has my Mom, who has a penchant for running little apps she finds on the web. In the cases where they are malicious, she just gets a protection fault and knows to happily move along to the next little animation.

      http://www.techproblemsolver.com/limited.html
      h ttp://www.dotnetdevs.com/articles/RunningAsNonAdm in.aspx
      http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/
      ht tp://www.pluralsight.com/keith/book/html/howto_r unasnonadmin.html
      http://support.microsoft.com/de fault.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;305780

      For the handful that did take advantage of some buffer overflow, please point out those vulnerabilities that remain unpatched through Windows Update.

    3. Re:Ironic methinks. by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 4, Insightful


      They don't do anything, they get blamed, try to do something, they get blamed. Come out of the MS bashing mentality to see that they are trying to resolve the issue. The only reason spyware is so prevalent in IE is because of monoculture, nothing to do with engineering

      Keep in mind that a good amount of Microsoft criticism (call it "bashing" if you want) is due to their engineering choices. Those choices lead to the outcomes critics predicted. Which in turn leads to a wasteland of broadband zombies.

      When Microsoft attempts bandaid solutions, there is more criticism. That isn't bashing. It's pointing out that Microsoft has issues - much of their own doing.

      Sure - they're doing something. But is "doing something" really solving the problem?
  2. Re:Hate to break it to Microsoft... by zbyte64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes.... just tell that to the normal users that simply use their computer for pr0n or for simple searches
    Most people dont know where to get software like firefox or spyware removal - let alone even know it exists
    Microsoft will either bundle it for free, increasing the value of their OS (again most people don't know about alternatives) or MS will charge for it, making more $$ - in the end, average joe will think MS is their hero for saving them from spyware (o the irony)

  3. Re:wow... good job at nothing by MoralHazard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Did it ever occur to you that they might have modified code other than the UI? Maybe there are non-visible changes to the scanning engine or something, perhaps to enhance the integration with the Windows OS?

    Imagine for a moment that the computer is doing more than painting pretty pictures on your monitor (that's the TV-thing on top). Could we agree that a program intended to detect spyware could be substantially modified without altering the appearance to the user?

    How did this get modded as "informative"?

    Oh, that's right--he bashed MS. Sorry.

  4. Re:Sample by Michael+Hunt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One would hope that if somebody actually took the initiative in installing Firefox, or similar, that they would know that the MS tool is, in fact, lying.

    That said, dollars to donuts that nobody who'd install FF or its ilk would pay Microsoft for something they can get for free off Lavasoft/Spybot.

    --
    You're doing it wrong.
  5. Re:Sample by __aatgod8309 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fixing IE would involve such a substantial change to both itself and windows that it won't happen. You've seen how long it took to provide the 'fixes' in SP2 for XP, and in the end it diverted staff from development of Longhorn. Imagine that applied to something even more fundamental to windows, like redesigning ActiveX to be easier to manage, or making IE an optional windows component.

    That kind of work would be probably be even harder than writing Longhorn, and we've seen how long that's taking. And that would most likely require a development team as big as that of Longhorn, if not bigger. And they wouldn't be getting paid for it - so what do you thing the chances are of MS doing that?