Symantec Brings Complaint Against MS to EU

linumax writes "Symantec has made a complaint against Microsoft to EC anti-trust regulators over the software giant's entry into the security market. The "informal" complaint allows the Commission to consider whether or not an anti-trust case is merited. The Commission is the executive branch of the European Union (EU)." From the article: "The news comes on the day Microsoft announced plans to begin offering business users an integrated anti-virus and anti-spyware product called Microsoft Client Protection. A beta version of this product is expected to be released by year's end. The company is already offering some customers a beta version of its Windows OneCare consumer security software. At issue is Microsoft's plan to bundle its security software with Windows Vista, the next major version of the Windows operating system due next year."

Comments

Mafia

[tobybuk]

And I the only one that thinks that MS offering anti virus software is very similar to the mafia offering 'protection'?

Re:Mafia

[Kjella]

It's pretty ridiculous to ship an OS with a broken security model AND the antivirus and firewall to fix the problems. Why not just design it right in the first place?

Well, the fact that the users are broken as well. If linux users ran every funny program that dumped into their inbox or came across on some shady site, they'd be equally screwed. However you want to tell me the linux security model helps, it doesn't. If people were used to sudo as root to install something, they'd install this. If they had to chmod programs +x, they'd chmod this too. The only way you could protect users against themselves is to make it very hard to install software (bad) or lock them in to only use your distro's software (worse). Or run anti-virus. I don't recall the last time my anti-virus warned me about something that I didn't consider obvious, I don't actually need it (but I design security in layers, just in case). Anti-virus is a fix for broken users, not broken software. And Linux and BSD ships with a firewall too, that's hardly a sign of breakage.

Re:Mafia

[Omnifarious]

I still call that a broken security model.

It should be possible to use the OS to put a fence around such programs so people can still run them. SELinux sort of has some of the infrastructure to do that. But moving to a full capability model may be a better choice.

Blaming people for doing stupid things all the time is a very poor approach to security. Computers are for people. People aren't for computers. Things should work with people in such a way that they have to remember as few rules as possible.

In fact, people might react a little better and follow the rules more if you explained to them that the computer was too stupid to distinguish between the program that ran off the net and a program installed by the sysadmin, and so it would let the program from the net do all the same things, so to help the computer out because it's so stupid, they should avoid running things from the net.

Now THIS is +5 funny!

[RLiegh]

Microsoft has had a looooong-standing relationship with Symantec, going back to the days of the Norton Utilities (Peter Norton was a big pusher of MS products back in 1985/86). What makes this so funny is that slashdotters could have predicted this. How?

Because...Microsoft screws over EVERYBODY who has any business dealings with them.

Everybody

Cry me a river....

[6Yankee]

I'd feel a whole lot more sympathy towards Symantec if Norton Internet Security 2005 didn't depend on Internet Explorer.

The price they pay for being monolitic

[Raul654]

I'm all for anti-trust laws, but I think this situation is a bit ridiculous -- the complaint is utterly without merit. Symantec and McAfee built their buisness models on Windows being a shoddy, insecure POS. Now, that Microsoft is tightening it down and including a virus scanner, and they are crying foul because it's going to put them out of buisness? I'm sorry, but that's the price they pay for being monolithic, for failing to diversify. Structural unemployment is a bitch.

If it were integrated ...

[Random BedHead Ed]

Any OS maker has the right - indeed, the responsibility - to secure their system. Integrating security mechanisms into Vista would be fine, not unlike adding iptables to the Linux kernel or requiring an admin password for all security-related operations in Mac OS X. So if Microsoft were to give this away as part of Vista, they could virtually kill Symantec and I would have no problem with it. After all, Symantec has made a killing on compensating for problems in Windows, and fixing those problems is far from bad business.

But if Microsoft intends to charge for their security products, it's a scam. They'd have a vested interest in building only basic security into their OS, because enterprises will otherwise have no reason to buy the security add-ons. I hope Symantec wins this not because Microsoft's entry into this market is wrong, but because they've done it entirely the wrong and corrupt way.

Why anti-virus is part of the OS

[G4from128k]

As much as I dislike MS, I can see three arguments that antivirus is an OS function.

1. A key function of an OS is to regulate, allocate, and manage the hardware and software resources of the machine. Controlling which chunks of code/processes/threads have access to which other chunks of RAM/filesystem/IO seems core to both an OS and to controlling malware.

2. Anti-malware software needs to operate at a level higher than the malware to avoid malware countermeasures. If the anti-virus is just another application, even if its at the admin level, its going to be vulnerable to being turned off by malware that explicitly tries to avoid detection and removal. Anti-virus needs to run at a level above most user and admin processes.

3. Malware often exploits holes in the OS. All jokes aside, the OS vendor is one of the most likely organizations to understand these vulnerabilities and make a semi-competent decisions on whether to patch the OS to close the vulnerability or use anti-malware to expunge or repel the malware.

Interesting...

[DarkBlackFox]

So Symantec/Norton make a name for themselves peddling products designed to keep people safe from security problems in Windows. Between the Customer and Microsoft, Symantec is a third party offering protection. After all these years, Microsoft decides it has the capability/desire to protect customers themselves. I can see why Symantec would be pissed, but it was they who built their house on sand. They based their business model on the combination of unwitting users and Windows flaws, so it's only natural for their business to decrease as users become more informed and Windows becomes more secure. As has been said many times in the People vs. RIAA/MPAA threads around here, The Right To Profit is not guaranteed. Symantec gambled on a product line, and thus far has done very well. The odds are changing though, if Microsoft wants to start protecting people from themselves.

Heck, I remember running Microsoft AV in Windows 3.1/Dos 6.2 days, cleaning the Form virus off various floppy disks. (Don't Copy That Floppy anyone?)

* I don't mean Windows becoming more secure in the traditional sense of locking down, though XP SP2 is a big step up, I mean the manufacturer of the product (Microsoft) providing alternate means of protection without the need for 3rd party products.

No sympathy for symantic, but...

[bigtrouble77]

Microsoft should be dedicating their resources in finding a cure, not a treatment. This presents a big conflict of interest for them, kinda like a coach betting against his own team.

Nope, a good security model is "basic security".

[khasim]

While Media Player, Browser and other functionalities that are bundled with OS can be argued with some facts, Antivirus and AntiSpyware software provide basic security.

Nope. "Basic security" comes from a decent security model.

Since Microsoft does not have a decent security model for their OS's, they get infected.

Which is why you need to continuously update the virus signatures.

On one side you can watch people laughing and pointing on every security bug, but on the other people agree with the option that MS is not allowed to bundle software against security and malware problems.

Not many years ago there was a flood of "macro viruses" for Word and Excel. Then Microsoft made a very minor change and asked people if they wanted to run the enclosed macros ..... and the Word macro virus is now almost dead.

The correct approach is to fix the real problem.

The PROBLEM here is that when Microsoft starts shipping its own anti-virus/spyware app, the other companies will all die.

Which means that within a couple years, the ONLY commercial option you will have for anti-virus on Windows will be ... Microsoft.

Now, to see how much effort Microsoft will be putting into that ... look how long the problem has already existed and look how long it took Microsoft to improve IE.

Re:the poop factor...

[nmb3000]

...it may very well be game over for Symantec.

I'm not so sure. While it's true that Norton/Symantec Anti-Virus is one of Symantec's big packages, it's not the only software they sell. Their recent acquisition of PowerQuest gave them all that software, including Partition Magic. They have a very active Ghost division, a division that while it might not be quite as profitable as AV, likely makes a fair bit. They've also got several other products like spam/virus filtering. The lists of their Home, Small Business, and Enterprise products are pretty large. If Symantec did completely close down it's AV division, while it might hurt the company for a while and cause a number of jobs to be cut, they have plenty of other products available to keep on going, at least long enough to re-group and put their focus someplace else.

On another topic, these issues are interesting. It's not so much that Microsoft is trying to bully Symantec out of business as it seems they are really trying to improve the view most people have on the security of Windows. XP SP2 gave users a "free" firewall which has drastically cut down the spread of worms and the like. It only seems logical that the next logical step in securing an OS is to control and protect the content already on the system, namely with an Anti-Virus agent.

You could look at this as saying that the reason that Symantec and others were able to sell AV and firewalls in the first place was because Microsoft was deficient in OS security. Now that they're catching up with it, any specialized companies that took advantage of this niche are going to hurt unless they can focus on something else. "Diversified interests" applies to large companies just as it does to personal portfolios.

Yes, it sucks for these companies, but it's not the same thing as if Microsoft started offering Office free with Windows.

if Ford was the only car company

[J_Omega]

The analogy might make SOME sense if Ford was a convicted monopoly and decided to start manufacturing the tires as well.

:) Not flamebait.

[khasim]

Linux is less "user friendly" if you define "user friendly" as "makes it easy to accidently install applications".

On the other hand, if you define "user friendly" as "works and keeps away trojans" then Linux is more "user friendly" than Windows.

The question is ... whether the additional ease of accidentally installing a trojan (Windows) is offset by the ease of keeping them off your system (Linux).

Will the average Linux user spend less time and effort keeping his/her system clean and functional than the average Windows user? Less time but more effort? Less effort but more time? I believe it will be less time and less effort to keep a Linux system clean. Less time and less effort should equate to a more "user friendly" system, eh?