Slashdot Mirror
McAfee, Symantec Think Vista Unfair
davidwr writes "Is Microsoft unfairly locking anti-virus companies out of Vista? Symantec and McAfee seem to think so and they aren't being very quiet about it, placing a full-page ad in the Financial Times. If you've found the ad online, please post a link."
Something McAfee, Symantec and all other anti-virus/anti-spyware/firewall/spam-filter companies should bear in mind, if operating systems, applications and other software had been properly designed in the beginning these companies wouldn't exist. These aftermarket companies are effectively parasites. Once the host changes significantly the parasites advantage is gone. Who can say Microsoft is now to blame for not keeping them on the gravy train? It's would be true, however, to say that these aftermarket companies are in effect and after the effect Q/A arm of Microsoft, which has doubtless helped fuel Microsoft's growth. If you're a corporate IT officer, would you be comforted to know you only have one place to go for help now, and it's the company which releases extreme high priority bug fixes frequently?
Microsoft was overly optimistic about the true nature of people (they shouldn't as they've proven to be devils themselves), expecting nobody would take advantage of flaws, like giving everyone effectively root on their computers, thus every application, including malicious code. Further, they've been wonderful about hiding the true nature of what's running on your PC. I can see executables, but DLL's, why the hell shouldn't I see those easily? Anything running on my computer should be visible, how else can I tell if there's something there which shouldn't be?
So, once again Microsoft attempts to get it right. Maybe they'll be closer to the mark this time. I don't care. XP was the last operating system I'm ever buying from them and I don't pirate stuff. With Vista promising to be larger than ever, I don't think it's the direction I want to go. As Michael Crichton implied in Jurassic Park, the more complex a system the more likely it is to break down. I don't find the every growing Windows OS/Environment comforting. I'm also tired of the technology tax, I just want something to work, to be able to do mundane things and play a few simple games when time affords. Good luck McAfee, Symantec and all the rest, it was overdue. Don't forget to send your stockholders a "Thank You" for all the money they gave you.
Of course, if it all goes tits-up for Vista, Microsoft have nobody else to blame. Doesn't that at least warrant a warm, cozy feeling?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
about nothing.
Once Vista hits the streets in its final incarnation, and the Bad Guys get to working on it, my money is on the premise that third party antivirus solutions to whatever problems that inevitably must arise, will continue to be a necessity.
After all, it's not like we don't already have a pretty good track record to examine, with the folks who are producing Vista, eh?
Is it fascism yet?
They are damned either way.
A) Release an OS without really beefing up security and watch everything bad about XP and prior releases repeat itself on a larger scale.
B) Release an OS and beef up security and see people who have made a living compensating for your poor coding in the past complain that they can't in the future.
The NAPA analogy is shockingly accurate in my opinion. Like what would happen if all the fast food places discovered a way to make the same fast food, but make it healthier enough that people didn't have to worry about dieting anymore? Who would complain? Diet manufacturers of course...
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Why arent they attacking OSX as well? I mean it has a built in firewall that is actually semi decent and not many other widely exploited vulnerabilities... Wouldnt that mean that OSX has been for a long time shutting out companies like this?
Those who designed the Internet were also overly optimistic about the true nature of people and didn't really consider security issues either.
I really don't blame either group. If they had considered all possible future needs prior to creating an implementation they'd still be working on it today and Slashdot would be a pen-pal club.
I hope McAfee and Symantec were around pushing for the administration to enforce antitrust back when it might have mattered. It's too late now. This is what you get when a company acquires monopoly power.
I remember when water-cooler talk veered from sports to politics to what word processor you liked. (Remember when there was more than one?)
Anyone remember a program called Lotus 1-2-3?
Oh, and what about Stacker? Why, yes, Microsoft stole Stacker's technology, called it DoubleSpace, and drove Stacker out of business despite Stacker's winning their patent infringement lawsuit.
I haven't heard much about GoBack lately, have you? Wildfile GoBack... I mean Adaptec GoBack... I mean Roxio GoBack... I mean Norton GoBack...
Anyone who believes all this was because Microsoft had superior products lives in a logic-tight compartment.
It's too bad that the administration chose not to pursue antitrust in any meaningful way against Microsoft, but they didn't, and these are the consequences. If Microsoft feels like squashing Symantec and McAfee there's nothing you or I or Symantec or McAfee can do about it. Only the feds have enough power, and possibly even they don't have enough any more.
So, let's all hope Microsoft's antivirus component is pretty good, because whether it is or not, in a few years it's all we're going to have.
(Besides ClamAV, of course...)
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I suppose Microsoft will claim that this is another integral part of an OS. While my first reaction is to scoff...
Your use of the word "claim" implies that someone other than them should decide what is, and is not, part of their own product. They wouldn't be "claiming" such a thing, but simply stating it. "Yesterday, our product looked like X, and today, it looks like Y." Other companies that glom onto a freight train like MS and get rich doing so can hardly complain (with a straight face) when that other company's products change shape or purpose. Symantec and MacAfee aren't MS's customers, the end users are. If we ever get to the point of killing off most of the spam conduits in the world, we'll probably hear about how the spam-filtering appliance makers are being "unfairly" deprived of a living.
This all derives from the pervasive sense of entitlement that's drenching our culture. MacAfee and Symantec know the score, but they're playing this card because they know it will resonate in a courtroom full of modern day jurors, should it come to that. Sleazy, but probably clever in real terms.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I really hate this popular Slashdot myth that viruses only exist because OSes are designed improperly. No, wrong. Most viruses are just malicious programs that get executed by the user. They don't hack in to the system, the are downloaded with another program. They come in the front door not the back one. There isn't an OS level defense for this short of an Orwellian trusted computing scheme. If I sent you a version of Apache with malicious code in it and you installed it as root, I could do whatever I wanted. Doesn't matter how secure your OS is, you gave it the permissions it needs.
What virus scanners do is provide a database of known bad code (and check for variants). They are like a bouncer with a list of known criminals. Even if the owner says "Sure, let that guy in," they can check their list and say "Sir, you don't want to do that, he's known to be a bad guy."
Now you are somewhat right that certain kinds of designs make more attacks possible. For example if you have services exposed to the Internet, then a worm can try to get in there without any user intervention. However the fundamental problem of malware is not solvable with any OS I'm currently aware of. Running as a deprivledged user does nothing. Either the malware can just install as the user and wreak havoc on that user's files (which is ultimately what they care about not the OS), or will just ask for escalation, which clueless users tend to grant without thinking, and then do as it wishes.
Unless we move to a trusted architecture, where only signed apps can execute, or we manage to get all users to be highly technically competent, they'll always be a need for virus scanners, at least on the dominant OS. Lock down every other way in all you like, it doesn't matter when you can infect people by sending them an e-mail that says "Hi I send you this file in order to have your advice."
No,
If they release a new OS with beefed up security by the definition of ot being "beefed up" that would mean no need for third party security addons. Actually I believe Vista has a documented API for how they handle security now so Symantex and others can still write security applications. They're just mad because a lot of what they do isn't needed now. So if they do your version C they will still be hated by anti-virus manufacturers.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
is a synonym for "someone we haven't figured out how to screw out of their VAR market share yet."
The list of companies that added value to Microsoft OS products, then watched as Microsoft bundled those products into their offerings (often at no cost to the customer), goes back to MS-DOS. Quicken is the only product I've seen Microsoft take a bead at and not knock them into irrelevence. OS/2, Netware, Lotus 123, WordPerfect, AOL, Borland, several desktop database vendors, DEC, FAX drivers, scanner/OCR software, screen savers, and many others made some cash and then faded into the recycle bin. Now Microsoft is stretching into enterprise applications with their piles of money.
Tough business to be in.
Sleep is for the Weak
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but the major antivirus companies, especially Symantec, have had this coming for a looo-hooong time.
Most virus writers have moved on to even more damaging (trojans, worms) or lucrative (malware) attacks by now, that the major checkers are either too slow to protect against or, in the case of malware, outright refuse to unless the user buys a new product. Meanwhile even Microsoft Word now contains some built-in anti-virus measures, all the major webmail providers have built-in virus scanning, and many new computers don't even HAVE floppy disks.
This is not to discount the dangers of viruses, mind. My dad once took a new computer back to the store because of a virus on it that simulated a memory parity error, and boy was I EVER mad about that. But that was a 486DX running at 66mHz running Windows 3.1, and that was my last personal experience with viruses. They are just not the threat it once was, yet to listen to these guys, you'd think the world was about to explode, constantly, forever.
McAfee was the company that mongered much fear a few years ago about a JPEG virus that was going around. Remember that one?
Symantec is so anxious that people continue to subscribe to their highly lucrative virus definition service that they'll use any combination of the words "Urgent" and "Recommended," and red and boldface text attributes, to get people to pony up for another year of protection they probably don't need, and Microsoft themselves is a major contributor to this funding source by including that little Security Center taskbar icon to nag users into putting antivirus software on their machine.
Antivirus software is the kind of thing that should be provided by the OS manufacturer for free, because it makes the OS more secure. Windows could certainly use more of that.