Microsoft Locking Out Anti-Virus Makers?

twitter writes "Anti-virus makers have more to fear than stonewalling by Microsoft if a report by Agnitum, maker of Outpost Personal Firewall, is right about recent trusted computing changes. All the problems were summarized in a choice Register quote, 'In addressing the potential problem of not being able to install Outpost on new versions of Windows, we have discovered that it is possible to drill past the new security measures introduced by Microsoft - if we use the same techniques used by hackers.'"

Comments

Re:They Started With Device Drivers

[gnuman99]

It is called "Designed for Windows" program. Yes, applications have to be signed. And yes, you have to send a copy to MS so they can verify if you follow guidelines when they get 1000s of core dumps from your application. Or complaints about spyware and crap.

http://www.microsoft.com/winlogo/default.mspx

Yes, it costs money because you have to buy a digical certificate from Verisign. And send the software on a CD to MS, so a postage stamp there too.

And yes, MS will probably start treating software from unknown vendors differently than those that have registered. But afterall, how can you blame them with all the spyware screensavers and other crap.

We already see digital signatures in Linux like Debian. Untrusted repositories get flagged as "WARNING!! Untrusted source. WARNING!!". Microsoft should be doing the same to protect its user base.

Re:Microsoft is just isolating itself

[grcumb]

"It's silly to think that developers should have full access to every single internal structure or API call. It's called "bad design principle". It means they can't change things internally."

WTF? I understand what you're getting at, but please think about what you've just written for a second.

It's not at all silly to give developers full access to your system internals, as long as you're clear about the repercussions of using them. In fact, there's a whole bunch of developers using this stuff called FOSS, which is based entirely on this principle.

I know, I know; your point is that if developers depend on a certain implementation, then the vendor is forced to continue supporting it forever, which, according to your reasoning, leaves them with no further room to grow or innovate. Unfortunately, that perspective is just bollocks. FOSS developers deal with this every day, and they've found a perfectly workable process:

Supported APIs are marked as such. Deprecated APIs are marked, too, with the clear warning that past this version, you're on your own. Unsupported interactions with the internals are marked - not fenced, but simply labled Here Be Dragons. You're welcome to venture there if you want, but don't go asking for help if something goes wrong. Most developers benefit from a better understanding of how the whole system works, and can in fact suggest or offer improvements in upstream functionality as well as better implementing their own.

I'd be fascinated to know why you think that things are somehow different for Microsoft than they are for IBM or Novell.