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Microsoft Begins anti-virus Software Development

Posted by Hemos on from the long-expected dept.

An anonymous reader writes "From the article: Microsoft's announcement that it will enter the AV market next year, with initial trials starting next week, could be a sign of many things to come, says SecurityFocus's Kelly Martin. " Not unexpected, given their recent purchase.

7 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Resistance is futile by gelfling · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I guess the most depressing aspect of this is that I put almost no credibility in most of the statements MS makes. If they are succesful then it will be a weak middling product that probably focuses on protecting MS OS's and applications exclusively, probably will interfere with everyone else's products and will most likely be several years and several releases late. On the other hand it will probably wind up being 'free' as in you don't have to pay for it directly but because it will be cancerously embedded in the OS it will help keep the price of MS products absurdly high. And last but not least, the list of security patches for the AV tool itself will be extensive. Plus you can figure that it will absolutely crash Firefox and Openoffice.

    1. Re:Resistance is futile by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      cancerously embedded in the OS

      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...
  2. Re:Start the week with a dupe by ThogScully · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What's worse is that the editor clearly did search for past postings regarding Microsoft's Anti-Virus initiatives to find the story that announced their purchase. And apparently that search didn't turn up the past article of which this is a dupe.
    -N

    --
    I've nothing to say here...
  3. wait'n'see by kd4evr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    how things turn out. It sure takes them Redmond gang a while to come up with anything, when looking at the purchase-company / product-to-market cycle...

    People have launched a number of variations on the
    "1. massively spread lame s/w w/ vulnerabilites
    2. start seling antivirus s/w
    3. profit?"
    hypothesis. However, this would only turn out to be a correct theory only if the AV s/w worked remarkably well, shifting the virii vulnerability stories focus elsewhere. I wouldn't want to bet a dime on a conspiracy theory or on any type of a silver-bullet solution.

    My bet is different - many Redmond products had flaws and some attempts at new niche markets were downright failures. Hence, I'd bet on an AV product that will fit 'normally' into the S win suite, reducing only part of the problems and introducing some (as typical of any s/w) new issues of its own.

    A less safe bet, but not to be dismissed, is the ultimate toll-for-disaster scenario, also mentioned times and again in this discussion.

  4. Re:The Register is right when it says... by Slashcrap · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Dear Mods,

    Instead of modding the parent down as "flamebait", why not provide some counter examples?

    If you can't then it's hardly flamebait is it?

  5. The way of Roxio? by Beefslaya · · Score: 1, Interesting
    I wonder who they are going to "buy" to build in antiviurs into the new Windows?

    GOD NO!! Not Norton!!

    Of course Norton is already geared to take over your PC with mindless popups reminding you how stupid you are and if your system is "secure" or not, so the code should seemlessly integrate with any Microsoft Operating System.

  6. Re:No kidding... by jamie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We're working on it. Right now Slash just uses MySQL's MyISAM FULLTEXT indexing, which is kinda 2001. It's a cheap solution that we've limped along with for quite a while. But we've rewritten our search code to be modular, anticipating a better solution that we can plug in, once we find one we like. Our top contenders right now are Lucene and Kinosearch.