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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."
From MSFT:
OneCare provides antivirus support, anti-spam filtering and firewall protection, automated hard drive cleaning and back-up, and an update notification service.
http://www.vnunet.com/news/1163024
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?
No, it shouldn't. If Microsoft *did* bundle AV with Windows, everyone on slashdot would be jumping up and down saying "Microsoft are being anti-competitive yet again!!". Microsoft have been (rightly) burnt by the fair competition regulations often enough to know that they cannot just bundle this in and need to offer their product so that it can compete on the open market.
That said, many people will use it because it is easiest to take it from the same vendor as the O/S, even if it's not the best solution, technically.
My biggest concern is that MS will use non-disclosed APIs to support their AV, leaving the rest of the market to use the current selection of cludges to make their work. Obviously, this would be unfair and they should be shot if they are thinking it...
Their not making enough selling windows,so they'll make it up buy selling you something to fix windows.If nothing else,they have balls.
This is an outrage. If Microsoft knows how to make their product more secure, they should incorporate it into the OS. "Wow, that's a bad virus! This will be *great* for our antivirus subscriptions..." Will Microsoft's corporate customers accept this?
Have you ever actually looked into TCPA? What about it makes you think you cannot run any code you want?
Finkployd
Seems the only thing left is making the autoupdate mandatory by virtue of the EULA and then charge subscription for that as well. The offer for virus protection by subscription might be just the thing to ease the barrier here.
:-)
End result: OS itself is primarily subscription based for all practical purposes. No more trouble with pirated copies. Needless to say, all in the name of making the world more secure.
Of course I'm just theorizing
Microsoft will dominate the security (AV, spyware) part of the software industry. In five years, there will not be a McAfee or others. So whats left on that side of the computer world?
I MUST be a prophet. Ten years ago I said that you will either run Microsoft software entirely or you won't run it at all. Adobe will be all thats left on the Windows side for off the shelf software.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
Traditionally, Microsoft has always offered substandard products. Office wasn't near as good as Word Perfect, Scandisk and Defrag weren't as good as disk doctor and speed disk, and so forth. They have won by cheaper prices, bundling, or flat out black hat tactics like code adjustments in the OS to keep software from working properly. On thinking about it, I have YET to think of something....ANYTHING that Microsoft didn't either buy, steal, or mimic. Doing that, they take the competitions' ideas and crush them.
Several of the posts here are already agreeing with my thinking of "Microsoft, it's your crappy code that's causing the problem. Why should we pay you to fix something you broke but we bought in good faith?" Granted, I'm speaking mostly for my customers here as I am slowly moving completely away from Windows, but the point still remains the same.
It's come to the point where you have to question Microsoft at this point. If they start making money from Anti-virus subscriptions, what's their incentive to fix the flaws in the software that are causing the problems in the first place? The consumer already has a false idea that viruses and malware are just a fact of life and they WILL get infected without doing anything so they just live with it. If a peice of code is flawed that will allow introduction of malicious code of any type without user intervention, it falls to the software producer to fix it, not charge to protect against it. If you ask me, this is Anti-trust #3 in the making.
Look at Ford awhile back when all those Firestone tires were causing havoc. Did the customer have to pay to get new tires? No! This is the same thing. I would urge ANYONE that's considering using any MS products like this that they should reconsider. It will only support Microsoft's belief that they can milk money out of their customers for producing a crappy product.
paying bounty hunters to track down virus writers, what with the size of MS' war chest...
They could use any methods if necessary, but no disintegration!
You figure out a way to teach the average idiot not to run unknown executables and you'd eliminate 90% of the problem.
I don't think that is possible. Sad but true.
Microsoft's security model for their IE browser is so fatally flawed it is the second biggest cause of virus propagation in the world. The biggest is Outlook Express and HTML mail.
They should fix that. The biggest problem is the activeX, java and javascript you have to leave enabled all the time or it pops up alerts incessantly. You cannot turn those alerts off, and they did that on purpose.
There was a Microsoft developers meeting in Palm Desert, CA some years ago where a Microsoft guy said:
"All web developers should put a script, however unneeded at the beginning of every page to make sure the user turns scripting on and leaves it on."
Outrageous.
Now I have let their secrets out. There's gonna be hell to pay!
.
Microsoft just admitted to be unable to or unwilling to secure their operating system(s) (I suspect it's a mixture of both).
Lets just sit back and watch Microsoft get sued over and over again by countless clients which relied on Microsoft "security". Just a few arguments:
1) This service should be free, the custumors paid for a secure and capable os (windows is neither - except for games, for which it is perfectly suited). Should the customer pay again to actually get security?
2) Windows gets advertised as being secure. Then why is such a service needed? (lieing in advertisements is punishable in some countries).
Then it's likely that every time you get an update, it will make any competing anti-virus product stop working. Some of us still remember the old rhyme: The code's not done till WordPerfect won't run.
If MS eliminates all other anti-virus vendors then we are put in an interesting situation. We have all heard the rumors that some AV companies have made deals with some spyware vendors and with the government to ignore programs that the vendors don't want scrubbed from your computer and that the government uses when investigating criminals. If there is only one vendor of AV software on Windows, there is only one company anyone has to negotiate with to keep their software from showing up as a virus.
On the other hand, I believe that the security of the computer is fundmentally the job of the operating system. So the software designer in me says that's where it should go. It should be a loadable module of the OS and it should be layered so that it doesn't just look for signatures but for suspicious behavior. It should check the logs for bad behavior, etc.
Finally, I simply will never fully trust any software that is built from sources that I can't inspect. I dont' care if it's the OS or the anti-virus software. I don't believe in security by obscurity. I want to be able to make sure that my AV software isn't excluding some malware because of a little money changing hands. My computer is MY property. If the government want's to know what's on it, I think they should bring a warrant, not plant programs on it.
While I recognize the value of "wiretaps" in law enforcement, I think that establishing a back door through which the government can load malware onto your computer will quickly turn into a backdoor that any hacker can and will use. Whatever technique they come up with, someone will figure it out, steal it, or buy it from some under-paid government worker. It will only leave all of our computers open... kind of like they are now.
I strongly suspect that Microsoft is going to try to dominate the AV market and use that domination to push their "Trusted Computer Model," where, effectively, MS owns your computer and controls what you can and cannot do with it.
All of this reinforces my commitment to never buy another MS Operating System. I only use Windows now because I love computer games and computer game manufacturers have not, for the most part, embraced the Linux market. I wish they'd hurry up and start porting.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
Download a few viruses and see if AVG detects them. Your opinion may change.