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Microsoft To Offer Virus Defense
FridayBob writes "According to the New York Times, Microsoft plans to
enter the consumer antivirus business
with a subscription service next year.
Most of us will remember
Microsoft's assimilation of RAV Antivirus from GeCAD Software of Romania in 2003." From the article: "Microsoft plans to expand the service beyond its 60,000 employees this summer and offer an open trial for consumers this fall. No date has been set for a commercial introduction, but the executive in charge of the new business said it would ultimately be offered as an annual service by subscription."
No, no, no! It should be part of the OS. If I buy an OS and it is vulnerable to viruses, it is a flaw in the OS's design. Why do I have to pay extra to make my machine usable?
It seems to me that a company profiting from its own security holes is a serious conflict of interest.
From TFA:
Let's break this down into steps, shall we?
I'm wondering when M$ is going to cut out the unnecessary fluff in their operation and just get a license to print money.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
So, your offering a service, to secure the operating system... that you built insecurely... that I paid for... and you want me to pay you MORE?!?!? for this!?!?
its like paying to have GM take care of your car when they built it without brakes!
#include sig.h
A cure for their own disease?
The disease of popularity?
Here they are, trying to address what has been an Achilles heel for them. I'm sure it will get painted here with the brushes of ridicule and scorn.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I will state for the record that I am not an MS fan. Now that I have that out of the way:
If MS Windows were not the dominant OS on desktop PCs, would it be as big of a target for virus writers? Let's suppose that the Mac had made it big and held 70% of the market (work with me, here). It stands to reason that there would be a whole lot more Mac exploits, as it would be a bigger target and under the microscope a lot more. Windows might still be more insecure, but it would be getting a lot less attention.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
With all the OEMs that ship Norton or McAffee or whatever with their computers, I have to wonder how Microsoft is going to approach marketing this. I smell a deal with an OEM like Dell in the works, or at least imagine they are gunning for one.
Really, don't most major-brand PCs (Macs not included, but this isn't an issue related to Macs as I doubt MS will make antivirus for OS X) come with AV? And people who build their own, I would guess, are a bit less likely to buy *cough* a Microsoft AV.
Viruses exploit a flaw in the security model of the OS. Fix the flaw and the viruses cannot spread.
Anti-virus software should NOT be part of the OS.
But, by that same token, Microsoft should NOT be selling anti-virus software.
The fact of the matter is that many viruses don't bother taking advantage of exploiting Windows or Outlook flaws. They don't have to. By far, the biggest factor in spreading viruses is human stupidity. They don't patch their machines. They click on stuff that reads like this:
FROM: sploitr@fishyware.com
SUBJECT: DO0D YOO gotta secyurtee pr0b/.
BODY: Yer eemail will be canc3lled if y00 do not click the a7tached fil3.
ATTACHMENT: malware.exe
The only way you can seriously argue that this is Microsoft's fault is by saying that they made it possible for people *this* clueless to get on the Internet.
include $sig;
1;
Microsoft's goal has been to get users to pay a subscription fee for use of its OS and Office. This is one step towards that.
Expect a "trial" copy to be included in Longhorn that'll bug the fuck out of users until they break down and subscribe.
Microsoft will get its annual user subscription fee. It'll have NO incentive to fix its security problems. And we'll get shafted.
Thanks Bill!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Ah, good, someone else thought of the mob protection analogy. "Nice computer you have here. Shame if any viruses were to harm it."
What I wonder is why more people (you know, average computer users, not /. posters) don't think about alternative platforms such as Linux or Mac. But last night I was watching the local news and they had one of their typically sweeps-inspired scare stories about how letting your kids use their computer to go to gaming sites will lead to spyware, and adware, and who knows what else! Aaaaaah!
OK, ignoring the stupidity of tying gaming to evil, I found the reporter's conclusion interesting. Noting the steps that could be done to protect yourself, he said keep your OS up-to-date, run anti-virus software, run a firewall, and monitor what your kids do with their computer. I kept waiting for the obvious other solution: Get rid of Windows and move to a Mac. End of problem. I could just imagine the reaction of Joe Average watching this report if the reporter had said, "Or you could just switch to a Mac and have virtually none of these problems." Joe Average would have sat up and said, "What? Really? I had no idea!"
And that's the point, most people have no idea there are alternatives out there that minimize the problem. Not that Linux or OS X-based systems are totally invulnerable, but it's a lot harder for a virus even directed at such OSes to get traction when the first thing they have to do is explicitly ask the user for permission to run and ask for a password!
Watching that news report, I realized this is what my sister-in-law would be going through if she were using a Windows box. She is clueless about computers, checks her email faithfully every month or two whether she needs to or not (sarcasm), and is always connected through broadband. That's a recipe for disaster...except I recommended she get an iMac. Instead of having to clear out adware and spyware every time I visit, she just uses her computer as she wants without any problem in the 2+ years she has had the box. No way a clueless Windows user on broadband would be so lucky, but a clueless Mac user? No phone calls to me with tech support issues in 2+ years. If only more average users knew this kind of computing experience was possible.
I was getting ready to invest $5K into Apple. I may have to change my mind now. Just imagine how many consumers or businesses will buy this because its from Microsoft and they will figure that Microsoft knows their OS better than anyone else, so they should be able to protect it better.
Leave it to Microsoft to make money off their own incompetency!
Now, I'm no more of an M$ fan than anyone else here, but from reading most of the comments on this story so far, it looks like everyone is thinking a virus is the same as a vulnerability. While some recent virii have exploited vulnerabilities in Windows to spread, there are still many out there that get around the old-fashioned way, by posing as a legitimate program and/or attaching their code to existing programs. This is a problem with any OS, not just Windows. Short of keeping an checksum database for every executable file(including DLLs, OCXs, etc) which is updated by the install program, there is no way that Windows can, by itself, know if a program has been modified legitimately or otherwise.(The whole checksum thing just happens to be what a lot of AV programs do, but anyway...)
A comapany with its fingers in every pot isn't a monopoly. A company that is the only one with its fingers in a certain pot is a monopoly.
Free MacMini
So, to review, Microsoft will sell you the disease (virus-prone Windows) and the cure (Windows antivirus software). And since the cure requires a subscription, Microsoft has even less incentive to improve security in Windows. They are going to happily feed at the trough of recurring revenue brought about by their own shoddy code.
This reminds me of the articles you see in the news every so often about the volunteer fireman who is discovered to be an arsonist.
I'd say you twisted the argument to the point where it doesn't make much sense.
I think the post in question made perfect sense.
MS has, by virtue of their direct control over the Windows OS, the ability to render viruses impotent and irrelevant by actually fixing the root problems that most viruses take advantage of. Instead, they're issuing a band-aid and asking you to pay extra for it. Is that simple enough to understand?
Someone else said "but if MS didn't charge for it, it'd put all the other anti-virus companies out of business!" The point is anti-virus companies exist because of problems in MS's OS. What you are asking MS to do is ignore the disease - which it is in their power to heal - so that companies selling the equivalent of headache medicine can stay in business. There is no reason for these companies to be in business if viruses are not a problem to begin with. And there is no reason why viruses should be a problem to begin with - the reason they are is that MS does not take security seriously enough.
This is just another example of that, despite its initial appearance to the contrary. Rather than actually fixing their OS's problems, they're saying "how can we make money off of our OS's problems?" Pretty ingenious - if utterly cynical - business model.
Microsoft has actually done a decent job with correcting flaws in it Windows.
The virus issue is an interesting question. Any operating system that allows code that the user introduces to the system to run with privelages of the user is vulernable to virus attacks. I mean to say, I can write a binary for a Linux box that wipes every file the user running it has access to.
Is that a flaw or just how things are?
Viruses that exploit bugs or flaws in the OS are deplorable, and show what a lax attitude MS had for so long. However, as MS is fixing those, what's more and more and more common are programs that trick/deceive the user into installing them and then do something that is pretty much malware. How should that be handled? They aren't viruses per se, but they are annoying.
That's whats really wrong with Windows right now. It's just sucky when dealing with stuff on your PC that you don't want.
As Windows is continued to be locked down this is the last "growth vector" around.
At some point, the virsues going around are no longer exploitig what Windows has to "offer", but rather, the users themselves.
Actually, you technically DO need a registration code, it's just packed in with the setup exe now and automatically entered when installing. That makes it improbable to distribute the setup exe, as AVG requires a unique key per install (for the free version anyways).