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Intel Enters Anti-Virus Market
Jack writes "ITO holds a story on latest Intel investment: "Intel is branching into anti-virus security with a $16 million investment in Czech anti-virus software vendor Grisoft. Grisoft's AVG anti-virus is used on more than 25 million computers worldwide, according to the company."
If an Intel processor could be made to have hardware-based virus detection, integrating with this software-based virus detection, the team could be a very powerful deterrant to any future virus outbreaks. Imagine the hardware and software components working side by side to protect systems, giving future virus writers another hurdle to be cleared, when developing new virus infestations.
Hopefully the virus software can be made more efficient as well, so that running virus software on a system won't bog it down, hogging system resources like crazy, making people want to not run virus software in the first place. This has long been the bane of the majority of software packages, as the slowdown they cause for certain users, especially gamers, has made them desire to not run the software packages on their systems, resulting in these systems being more vulnerable to a virus outbreak.
Another added benefit that I can see from Intel buying this software, is that eventually if they integrate software and hardware aspects into a cohesive package that is well-implemented and able to fight viruses at a better efficiency then other programs, this will cause Intel based processors to stand out as well, as these days, virus protection and spyware protection are very important to the majority of users out there.
If Intel does this right, this can raise the bar for future processing efforts. Soon there will be more to consider when buying a new system then processing speed and cache size, might have to start considering integrated software as well in the not so distant future...
Good luck on this one Intel...
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Does this mean that they're no longer going to release AVG updates?
I hope there remains a free version of AVG. That's what I install on the few windows machines I maintain for people. It's a lot easier to convince people to run antivirus software when they don't have to pay for it.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
AVG download page
I've used the free version of AVG for a few years now and it has been very good to me. I just hope that with this infuse of money Grisoft doesn't become too "corporate."
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
This seems like a big company diversifying and buying a portion of a smaller company, not trying to incorporate antivirus capabilities into their microprocessor line of products.
And Centrino was just a branding for a specific CPU, WiFi, and chipset. It wasn't some flashy new technology, just flashy marketing. I don't think you can really make virus detection software at the CPU level anyway.
AVG is great for me because it barely uses any system resources. I run a small company with older hardware and it runs great on there. Much better than something like Norton which can really bog down one of those machines
Yes, they plan to build chips that automatically shut down when they detect Windows running. Problem solved.
Not quite 'buying over the company' as partnering with a local Czech VC to buy over a majority stake from another Czech VC firm.
From the press release on Grisoft's website:
Grisoft announces investment by Intel Capital and Enterprise Investors
Prague, Czech Republic - September 6th, 2005 - Grisoft, one of the leading providers of anti-virus security software, announced today that Enterprise Investors (EI), the largest private equity firm in Central and Eastern Europe, and Intel Capital, Intel Corporation's venture investment fund, have made a substantial investment in the company.
The $52 million investment in Grisoft by Enterprise Investors and Intel Capital will result in a new ownership structure of the company, with a majority stake being acquired from current owners Benson Oak Capital. As a result of this strategic transaction, the two new investors will own a 65% stake in Grisoft.
Kind of ties in to the future of anti-virus...AV is moving towards file behavioral analysis to determine a file's viral status since signature detection presents an increasingly serious zero-day problem. Virtualizing a file is a great way to determine behavior, and Intel is working on hardware-assisted virtualization:
http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/vptech/
Tie the two ideas together, and you might see one of the ways Intel is hoping to use it's virtualization technology.
Virus Found: AdvancedMediaDestruction.worm
Threat: 5
Ease of Removal: 3
Symptoms: Unit performs well in games and does not get nearly as hot under normal operation.
Removal Instructions:
1) Unplug computer and peripherals.
2) Take off side panel.
3) Locate large heatsink/fan and remove from chasis.
4) Remove the underlying chip (Warning: May cause demonic possession if not removed violently enough).
After which, you must replace the motherboard to fully alleviate all issues.
Prevention: Use Intel.
Sure. It's called "Trusted Computing". It's another name for "Disney Rights Management". I hope you enjoy getting what you're wishing for.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I..... don't agree. Viruses are not generally written in machine or machine-specific code, they do the same as most Windows software does: call APIs that have flaws in them because MS does not write them robustly enough nor is there peer review to point out flaws that an originating team optimizing for flawless interoperability with another team's APIs and other code. In essence, open-source development is so sucessful in a security sense because such review (ie: how could a virus exploit this?) has already taken place in the development process in the wild.
A virus written for a Windows XP machine has at least a 90% chance of hitting a similarly protected Alpha running XP (OK, OK, let the flames begin....). Does the above comment infer that when Mac OS moves to i386 it will be more suceptible? This may be the case, for one or both of two reasons: 1) by then the focus will have moved from MS Windows attacks to Mac OS attacks because of market penetration, plus the added bonus of being a novelty like Windows virii have become. 2) the virus developers have learned tricks for machine calls and stops only pertinent to i386s; see the missing 10%.
Intel makes a general purpose CPU, and it works just fine. They shouldn't be responsible for fixing their hardware (thinking of the hardware AV idea) because of software that someone wrote to run on it that has undesirable effects to the end user. Similiarly, the PHP developers shouldn't be bothered to fix the (common?) mistakes made by hobbyists or otherwise.
Microsoft seems to have a good strong competative pattern that they've been doing. I don't know if Intel can compete. Microsoft's pattern is:
1. Create an Operating System
2. Look at what software is successful and making money on that Operating System.
3. Create Microsoft version of same software
4. Integrate said software into the OS and use Windows leverage to force OEM's and manufacturers to bundle preinstalled on most computers.
So far, this has pretty much worked and usually kills whatever piece of software was successful on Windows. I think its about to happen with antivirus software. I dont know if Intel or the other antivirus companies can compete with this. What do you think?
Why is Intel getting into the virus writing business? Aren't there enough virus writers out there doing this for free? We don't need the virus writers to be payed for doing this work! Is this some misguided plan to force everyone to run Linux?
:)
Oh, wait, did it say anti-virus? Never mind.
more important: will intel still allow avg free to exist?
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
Funny, but not without truth. We wouldn't be thinking about extensive antivirus, much less hardware-integrated antivirus if Windows didn't basically have sex with the internet.
Why does the industry need to revolve around fixing Microsoft's problems?
snip
They shouldn't be responsible for fixing their hardware (thinking of the hardware AV idea) because of software that someone wrote to run on it that has undesirable effects to the end user.
Why? Cash!
You're right, Intel shouldn't be responsible for fixing Microsoft's problems. I'm certain they don't feel that way. Fixing Microsoft's problems, though, is worth millions of dollars. Assuming Intel is looking to build an anti-virus system at the CPU or chipset level (pure conjecture, but let's just assume), they wouldn't be doing it because they feel a responsibility to do so. Rather, they'd be looking for a competitive advantage over AMD, and another reason for customers to ditch their perfectly good (but three year-old) 2.0 Ghz Pentium 4.
Of course, I'm not even sure how such a hardware anti-virus would work, other than something similar to the NX system on the x86-64 chips. If such a beast does rear its head, though, rest assured that it won't be because someone felt a moral responsibility to fix some Microsoft bugs.
BBSpot reported on this ages ago!
p rocessor.html
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2005/05/intel_virus_co
Don't bother with Cygwin just for AV. Clamwin is pretty sweet. No real-time scanning, but installation and configuration is fairly straight-forward -- and the database is updated several times a day.
The biggest problem it faces may be that it's so plain and easy to use that people have trouble accepting that it's as good as all the colorful commercial offerings they see. I wonder if Intel's gonna keep AVG's viruses.
Use it as a second scanner if you already have another AV program-- Clamwin is not a resource hog.
Oh yeah -- it's frequently used as an email scanner in networks of all sizes... don't worry about it's virus database!