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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."
Symantec thrives off the existence of viruses (and some people have said symantec has in the past written viruses). A permanent fix to viruses and self replicating programs would be bad for their biz.
M$FT, well they will have no ensure their products are vulnerable if they expect to sell AV and anti keylogger/spyware software.
Bottom line, reminds me of "Alien versus Predator" trailer tagline: "Whoever wins, we lose"!
Symantec is clearly crapping it's pants. They have recently been attempting to strike fear of impeding virus doom on the OSX platform, especially since their revenues from that part of the market have dried up significantly. If MS offers a product with hooks into it's OS and attractive bundles, it may very well be game over for Symantec.
blah, blah, blah...
Ok, so symantec is going after MS for an anti-trust suit? um...WTF? MS used to be notorious for security flaws. They clean up their act, try to pull together a new OS, and try to include decent security.
I'm sorry Symantec, but i don't think they're trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes and get away with a monopoly. I'd say they are trying to get their act together and get past their notoriety for sucking at security.
Why pay for Norton when it can't find viruses that i need it to find? I'm sorry but i'd rather use bundled MS software, if that fails i'll look for a free alternative, i'm not gonna spend $45 or whatever Norton costs these days to get a half a$$ed virus scan. I made that mistake two years ago, i don't feel like paying them more money for more half baked protection. I'll try what MS has to offer. I think the've made some improvements.
i'll leave you with this thought, MS Anti-Spyware Beta.
-MP
It's the most obvious conflict of interest: MS sells a buggy product, then sells another product that patches up some of the bugs.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
The OS is secure underneath. NTFS, for example, has encryption, full ACLs and other privilege mechanisms. Windows also allows for users with varying capabilities. All of this is above and beyond basic Unix security.
The problem is, users and programs don't use these features. That's only partially Microsoft's fault. Remember that there was a lot of momentum from the Win9x series which was a single user/no security operating system. People got used to that, developers got used to that and when it was time to switch over to a real operating system, who was going to rewrite all the software and change their habits? And certainly people wouldn't buy the new OS if it broke all their programs because Microsoft decided to force people to use the new features.
That's not all...Norton antivirus, at least 2004 and up, has required
a) running in Normal mode (safe mode scanning no longer an option - are you KIDDING ME?)
b) MSIE security settings to allow execution of ActiveX controls etc on the local disk. That means that when a virus sets all of your IE security settings to "High" and won't let you reset them, you also can't run Norton Antivirus. Brilliant.
Maybe I'm wrong and there's some kind of other mode you can run NAV in that doesn't depend on the mshtml engine, but if there is, I haven't heard about it.