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Microsoft Cuts Anti-Virus Support For Unix / Linux
jasonmicron writes "As previously reported on Slashdot, Microsoft has completed the aquisition of Sybari Software this morning. Before the ink was even dry, Microsoft cut all new antivirus support for all Unix and Linux definitions. Current customers will continue to receive support but new customers will not have the option to purchase the software under Unix / Linux. From TFA: Post acquisition, Syabri becomes a Microsoft subsidiary focusing on marketing anti-virus and anti-spam protection for Microsoft messaging and collaboration servers. It will continue to market Sybari's Lotus Domino products but will not sell Antigen versions for Unix and Linux."
And you're surprised by this why?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Well, if you're so upset, start your own Unix anti-virus company. Not so easy now, is it? It's always easier to complain than to do something.
Truly, if this stuff was allowed to go on in other industries we would barely be out of the stone chisel stage. Something needs to happen to bring the PC world to it's knees so that things start to shape up.
All of this in-fighting and patents/closed source/non-standardization needs to end... and NO Linux is not the be-all-end-all solution as it is just as bad at times.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Probably due to the lack of viruses/customers.
ClamAV is actually becoming usable, more hands might light work etc
I know lots of people here are going to cry foul, but come on: Who was gonna buy anti-virus software for linux from Microsoft?
Microsoft is affirming that Linux and Unix are more secure than Windows and don't require anti-virus software!
--Mike Boos
You must be mistaken, Linux doesn't have viruses!
From the article:
Well this says to me one of two things:
You be the judge.
I guess I'm just happy Microsoft can't buy linux and drop all support for that.
They don't sale or support Unix or Linux. What is the problem? They need to focus on their customers. That makes plenty of business sense.
Im not saying that virii arent in existance for unix or linux it just seems that most A/V for linux seems to be geared at protecting windows machines from the real world. Seems that linux is the armor protecting the sheep (windows) from slaughter.
Got hosting
Microsoft selling antivirus. That always leaves me gaping. It's like, I don't know, Lucrecia Borgia selling antidotes...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Selling anti-virus services for Unix/Linux is like selling ice cream to polar bears anyway. It's good to see Microsoft focusing on the real problems :P
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
Innovate onward, kind Microsoft!
Well, IE for Solaris was there, but no longer. And, of course, Xenix.
Go somewhere random
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Whats the point when clam is comming along so nicely?
Virus scanners on unix are only any good for protecting downstream windows clients and clam is ideal for this, although admittedly not quite ideal for real-time scanning of NFS/SMB shares, but for mail / web virus scanning its more than sufficient.
If clam continues the way it is, there will be a very small market for unix virus scanners.
Jason
Sure he could a Smooth Criminal, but maybe he's just a fun guy who the kids think is a real Thriller!
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
If you kill off all proprietary/closed source Linux offerings, what's left? Well, the need for stronger open source ones.
Thank-you Microsoft for helping to push all the alternatives into the open-source fee-for-service world.
There are plenty alternatives like those listed in the unix-linux antivirus mini-faq http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/openantiviru s/mini-faq/av-unix_e.txt?rev=1.40&view=markup Kindly compiled by the OpenAntivirus Project http://www.openantivirus.org/
Honestly I think the parent was commenting on the practice of buying out the competition. Or, more acurately in this case, buying up a supplier for the competition so you can cut their legs out from under them. On a larger scale it's the exact kind of practice that prompted the creation of anti-trust laws in the US. Of course this is a niche product, so I'd leave it to a lawyer to determine how much anti-trust law applies.
Heh. I went to a convention where wireless users had to show that they had AV software installed before being given the connection info. Had my Linux laptop there, they wouldn't let me on until I could show them some antivirus software running. Left, came back an hour later (after breakfast), and ran my "anti virus software".
#!/bin/bash
echo Scanning memory for viruses...
sleep 2
echo OK. System clean.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
How these acquisitions are chosen.
Microsoft needs to expand into the video game market. They buy the one game company with heavy support for macintoshes (which then ends).
Microsoft needs to expand into the virtualization market. They buy the one virtualization company with heavy support for macintoshes (which then suffers).
Microsoft needs to expand into the antivirus email filter market. They buy one of the antivirus companies with support for linux/unix (which then ends).
Funny how these coincidences work.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
So here's a question for you guys. If you owned this company or a similar one, and Microsoft wanted to buy you out for a good price, would you choose not to sell for ethical reasons regardless of the profit you would make?
Discuss, discuss
First, don't panic. Just because some company I've never dealt with stopped making a product I never used doesn't mean I feel the world is going in the crapper. There are other Unix/Linux Anti-V irus solutions.
There's ClamAV, which does an admirable job of keeping up with the stream of crap slung by the rest of the 'Net.
For commercial products, I've really liked Sophos' software. They were one of the only companies that supported the vast Unix/Linux versions we had when we made the selection.
Both work especially well when teamed with something like amavisd-new and your favorite MTA.
I recall some noise being made about McAffey bringing back their Linux AV software, too...
I used to think printing on on Unix sucked. Then I figured it out. Printing on Unix *does* suck. Like a Kirby.
They did the same thing with RAV (Romainian Anti -Virus)- one of the best qmail/sendmail/postfix/courier and console+monitoring virus scanners when M$ bought it.
First the sales stopped, then the virus definitions took a few days to get updated on each big 'outbreak', then they stopped coming at all... *sniff*
Fortunately by then, ClamAV had matured more than it did when we purchased RAV for our mail servers, and it was kicked to the curb.
In any case, why is this news? Microsoft decides not to put THEIR MONEY (since they purchased it) into their competitors products... duh!
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Yes If it were apple, /. would post.
Kaspersky Lab has actually hired *nix RAV developers and helped existing RAV users with migration. Good things deserve to be kept and developed further.
There are a couple of good reasons for having anti-virus software on a unix/linux mail server, even though they don't get viruses. First, it can protect Windows email clients. Second, anti-virus software can also pick up things like phishing emails, which are platform-agnostic.
Fortunately, good quality free (speech and beer) anti-virus software is available from http://www.clamav.net/ - and it's packaged in many linux distros.
*Sigh*...
Apple has earned the respect of the Slashdot crowd, it wasn't just given to them. Don't you remember Rob's (CmdrTaco) comments when the iPod was released... that sure didn't strike me as unadulterated praise.
I'm not saying that everything Apple does is golden, just that at least they take you to dinner before they screw you. Microsoft treats everybody like a two-bit hooker...
Here's a bit of Useless Knowledge(tm) for everyone: I seem to recall reading somewhere that polar bear milk was something like 40% fat, which seems like it would therefore be suitable for making ice-cream from directly...
I leave the technical challenges involved in milking the polar bears and trying to market "walrus-vanilla flavor ice cream" to a more enterprising individual...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Virus detection programs on UNIX or Linux are usually deployed on mail servers that kill the viruses before they hit Windows-based mail clients.
Therefore, cutting support puts Windows mail clients connected to UNIX mail servers at threat.
Stupid, stupid decision from a company that claims to be serious about security.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Companies buy other companies all the time, and make decisions that will impact a group of end users every time. The reason this is such breaking news on /., IMO, is that it's Microsoft "appearing" to give the shaft to *nix platforms. I'm sure MS didn't say "let's buy this company so we can stick it to the Linux guys." They have made unethical decisions before, but this would have been just stupid business sense. The primary reason they purchased this company, as the article states, is to have anti-virus technology for their messenger components. Why invest time and resources internally to develop something when they can just buy the technology already working? Cutting support for *nix was just a bonus. In all reality, would it make better business sense for them to continue developing and supporting software for the OS's that directly compete with them? No!
Some people may recall a company called Sequent. Here's a perfect example of a company who had a great product, and threatened a titan in the industry (IBM). IBM purchased them, took the technology that they wanted (low-level locking that exists in AIX 5L today), and trashed the rest of the company. It left all the PTX customers out to dry. But why would they care to continue developing PTX on Sequent platforms when they wanted to advance their POWER-based servers running AIX?
This is really nothing exciting IMO. So Microsoft acquired a company and dropped support for *nix. That is the most logical thing they could have done with the acquisition. Please try again for interesting news instead of touting the "you bastards!" picket sign outside the Evil Empire's headquarters.
We switched to Vexira from Central Command. Midway through our contract, CC was kind enough to tell us we had to upgrade to their new software, and by the way, you have less than a week to do it. This was between Christmas and New Years. Did I say the the new software didn't support our existing OS? (RH 7.2, patches from Progeny.)
Every time we've used proprietary AV software we've gotten screwed.
Solution: apt-get install clamav.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
Unix/Linux has decided to cut virus support.
If I wanted to run Microsoft software, I'd be running Windows instead of Linux, now wouldn't I?
Besides, do you really trust Microsoft enough to use an anti-virus product from them?
No matter where you go... there you are.
Unless things have drastically changed in recent years, I remember Sybari's most important product being their "Antigen" software which allowed efficient scanning of *email* for virii. We purchased the version of their product for Exchange Server back when Exchange 5.5 was a pretty recent product and people were still running NT 4.0 on their workstations.
I assumed the Unix/Linux versions of Sybari products were typically purchased for this purpose - in-line virus scanning of corporate email as it went through the Unix or Linux server?
Don't forget Microsoft bought FoxBase and killed MacOS support to kill databases on MacOS.
And Microsoft bought OneTree and promptly killed commercial quality version control for MacOS (they dead-ended the format and only with much begging allowed others {MW} to make clients.)
However, Bungie sold themselves because they didn't have deep pockets, were starving, and the gaming industry drove them that way. Microsoft needed that flagship killer app. They didn't just wax the MacOS release, they delayed the Windows release to make it non-relevant.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Actually the sales of *NIX versions were cut about 5 months ago. How do I know? I called and asked about it, then realized after the fact that it was the company MS was buying out.
So, erm, bit late.
I just finished reading an article on Linux viruses which I thought to be quite interesting. Here's the link.
The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...
ClamAV
s /
http://www.clamav.net/
OpenAntiVirus Project
http://www.openantivirus.org/
Actualy I have an Email server setup wit Postfix + AmavisNEW + SA + ClamAV, and I'm yet to see a virus that passed undetected.
Check our virus detection statistics here:
http://integracao.saude.rio.rj.gov.br/amavis-stat
We're behind the main corporate server, so our department depends on it to send or receive email. They use a NortonAV server, but more than once an infected email passed trough, and it were stoped by our Server.
So I now wonder how ClamAV would perform against the proprietary alternatives...
I really want to try it, but our "corporate policy" states that every email traffic must pass trough the "homologated" AV solution. We're actally the only department that is really using Linux for real, and the rest of the company still has this strong Microsoft culture and don't quite trust Open Source...
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Umm, Last time I checked Microsoft has no monopoly in the Anti-Virus market. Besides if you are talking about its monopoly in the PC OS market, this move hardly affects it one way or another.
This may actually be a good thing, believe it or not, for ClamAV accuracy. ClamAV was in danger of becoming too popular.
In the very specific-and-limited realm of software that uses heuristics to block malicious content, being the big dog is not necessarily best. There are no network benefits to having many copies of an AV package available (possible exception: those that phone home about new malicious content). It just means that all the malware authors test against and work on bypassing your software.
Let's take a brief look:
* Web browsers. IE is the overwhelmingly dominant browser. Firefox has a number of good architectural decisions made from a security standpoint, but it sure as hell isn't free from potentially-exploitable security holes. It's just that very few people are exploiting them. Why would they want to, when they can get ten times the return by exploiting IE? Sure, maybe after they've attacked IE a zillion ways they might be interested in spending resources on Firefox, but not right away.
* Spam blocking. Spammers now not infrequently run spam past major spam-blocking systems before sending it, and keep tweaking it until it gets past them.
* Desktop Virus scanning. In the past, major antivirus systems (like Norton Antivirus) have been directly attacked and disabled by viruses.
* Email Virus scanners. You think this will be any different?
My main concern is that Microsoft may be positioning itself to begin dictating email standards, which would give it very strong influence over the Internet. (They already tried this with their patent-encumbered SPF alternative, and while I'm not familiar with Exchange, I'm sure that Exchange follows the typical Microsoft pattern and "works better" with other Microsoft clients and servers in a myriad of ways).
Besides who really needs a AV for unix anyway ?
Unix antivirus scanners are used on mailservers to scan for Windows viruses that might affect Windows boxes, not to scan for viruses written for Unix.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Sorry, folks. Saying *nix doesn't have viruses is just fan-boy. Believing it is ignorant. As a matter of fact, I run Windows and Linux. Windows does tend to get more, simply because it has more market share. However, I can say that the only virus/worm I've ever gotten that DESTROYED important data was on Linux. God damned phpBB worm that replaces *.html among other things.
Anyway, such generalizations are foolish anyway, since it's usually not the OPERATING SYSTEM level software getting the virus/worms. It's some badly written service.
Anyway... you get the point. But please, stop being slashdot zombies and claiming Linux is perfect.
Keith