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Microsoft To Offer Free Anti-Virus Software
Dynamoo writes "The good news is that Microsoft have announced free anti-virus software for consumers, dubbed Morro, available late next year. The bad news is ... well, exactly the same. Although Microsoft's anti-malware products are pretty good, this move could drive many competitors out of business and create a dangerous security monoculture; major rivals will be lawyering up already. On the other hand, many malware infections could be prevented even by basic software. So is this going to be a good or bad thing overall?"
If it comes free with the OS it will drive away competitors because Joe-sixpack is
not going to spend any money to replace something he got for free, even if it sucks.
On the other hand, if any feature needs to be part of the OS is precisely a form of
protection against malware.
Come to think of it, if MS does a bad job of protecting PCs and drives away
competition on virus protection, maybe the company will finally implode and let other OSes
get a greater market-share.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
That's all I have to say.
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
Does it run on Linux?
Microsoft has done enough to break backwards compatibility already. They should just go the whole hog and on their next iteration, do a ground-up security analysis and refactoring of their OS, instead of trying to prevent & remove malware that latches onto existing API problems that some software might use legitimately.
It wouldn't be impossible to give private sandboxes to "legacy" apps that don't use the new secure APIs.
I've used both Avast and AVG freeware products with good results. Zero infections over the last couple of years.
As a consumer, it sure would be nice to have the OS actually ship with something that keeps the naughty people out, but there are a number of freely available alternatives already.
http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html
http://free.avg.com/
'course, if you use Linux then you can probably safely ignore the threat for now.
Cheers,
That reminds me, I need to put duct tape over all the rust on my car. Thing should hold up like a champ!
From Wikipedia :
Built initially in 1589 in response to raids on Havana harbor, el Morro protected the mouth of the harbor with a chain being strung out across the to the fort at La Punta. It first saw action in the 1762 British expedition against Cuba when Lord Albemarle landed in Cojimar and attacked the fort defended by Luis Vicente de Velasco e Isla from its rear. It fell because the English could command the high ground
@neonux
As soon as you provide users who won't click on somefamouspersonnaked.exe. Let's not lie to ourselves and say that if we put the same dumb users in front of say an Ubuntu install that they wouldn't click on somefamouspersonnaked.deb or something. They'd give sudo their password too.
Bring the users who won't do shit like that, adn then we will all have software that doesn't need anti-virus.
The antivirus market is, as everyone knows, the most FUD-filled part of the security industry. The effectiveness of different antivirus products is largely anecdotal, and shifts rapidly because of the arms race between virus writers and antivirus manufacturers. As it stands now, even "expert" end user cannot ascertain the relative effectiveness of the suites, and because antivirus products are still heuristics-based with a few "depacker" routines built in, they only catch the really obvious fish. (One funny thing with this is, if you pack an executable with a common yet relatively complicated packer, say "redeye", it'l get caught, but if you just jump in and jumble up the instructions with a debugger you can make it "invisible" easily). Because of this reliance on FUD to sell, and because there *is* already fierce competition in the antivirus market, maybe this won't change much, unless MS locks other vendors out somehow. Or will it be a different form of competition, because of the now-asymmetrical playing field? MS has an advantage in that they have access to the code and people who wrote the code, and designed the OS architecture.
2. It will be a basic virus scanner and will probably not replace NOD32 or another fully featured scanner.
3. Webroot seems to be doing just fine even though Windows Defender has been around for a few years now. Same for Spybot, Ad-Aware, and any number of other apps.
4. Compounded with #3, Microsoft Antivirus will be entering a well established field with plenty of household name competitors. Norton and McAffee are well known names that most consumers know and will probably opt for (quality of software notwithstanding).
5. Many smaller firms (Kaspersky comes to mind) have consumers as their small-fry and make their big bucks off volume licenses. It appears that Morro isn't competing here.
6. Whether accurate or not, perception or reality, many people consider Microsoft Security Solutions to be an oxymoron. So long as it can be uninstalled, people will be free to add their own antivirus software (see point #4).
Joey
The opportunities for humor start here and go on forever. I guess we might as well start:
"My God! Its full of fails!" "Like buying antibiotics from the hooker." "TrunkMonkey equipped with chair." "Would you like Warez with that?" "Antivirus vendors: Oooh. That's what 'gold partner' means!" "Hi, I'm a Mac ... and I'm a PC (achoo)." Good Lord this stuff writes itself. Hold on while I microwave some popcorn.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Well a virus is an irritating program that eats up resources, making your computer unstable, interfering with hardware, replicates and repairs itself when you attempt to delete it, and drives you insane.
The sad thing is, a lot of system-tray startup software that insists on self-installing does the same things too. No acrobat, i don't need to be running all the time. You listening, Apple? Heck, a lot of AVG software bogs down the system so much I'm wondering if the cure is worse than the disease.
It's free. If ANY other company (Apple, HP, anyone) decided they were going to release free antivirus software, anti-malware, blah blah blah, it'd probably be a good thing. MS does it and it can't be good, they're just fixing their own software, it is their own fault to begin with, etc. One would think we'd have gotten at least more creative at blasting MS.
On a more constructive note, it doesn't matter if MS ships it free with Windows. IE ships free with Windows, Safari ships free with Mac, Konqueror ships free, etc. The user that doesn't know any better to begin with is not going to go out and look for the best (out of 25) anti-virus and anti-malware solution possible. The user that doesn't know any better will use what Windows comes with. So what's wrong with MS providing free software with it's own product? Nobody seems to gripe about Konqueror being default in KDE, even though I presonally dislike it as a web browser.
Now, if they do other shady things like make it hard to uninstall, or whatever, that's different. But "free anti-virus software" and "shipped with Windows" in the same sentence doesn't mean we should get out a Gates-shaped guillotine.
Don't listen to parent, his "free" options are a sham.
For example, somebody suggested the Clam AV for Windows and it all it did was turn my screen into a black box with gibberish in it. If it wasn't for my swift hard reset, CLAM AV may have broken my computer!
MS releasing free A/V software... again? Wasn't Windows Defender "anti-virus" software?
And what to you do when someone finds and exploits a security hole in what many users will use as their sole means of computer protection?
I've got a bad feeling about this...
Anybody want my mod points?
What you speak of is known as The Dancing Bunny problem which as someone who has worked nearly 15 years in PC repair I can say is all too true. I had a buddy working corporate when Melissa hit and he said several PHB middle managers got MAD when he told them they couldn't have their attachment from that Melissa girl. He said he finally had to tell them "Go tell the boss you want to run Melissa and see what HE says". So never underestimate the incredible stupidity a user is capable of when they think there is a dancing bunny waiting for them. You should really read the link on the dancing bunnies. It is SO true!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The reasons why antivirus software exists is because Microsoft software security uniformly sucks, almost all software for the platform is pathetically vulnerable to exploitation and people don't patch it - mostly because the patches themselves are often toxic and because the patching system is so archaic every program needs its own update monitor and installer, each with permission to update software on the box and each subject to its own vulnerabilities. People also don't patch because many of them are using pirated windows or other software and are leery of getting the WGA virus, so they don't patch and become a persistent blight on the global network.
Microsoft making an antivirus isn't going to solve any of these problems, and Microsoft making the quality of antivirus software that matches their anti-malicious software effort will make things worse. It will, however, drive yet another category of software partner out of business. It's good to have goals, I guess.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If you think AVG is bad install NortonAV. You I've never EVER seen a computer with worse virus problems then the resource hogging that AV does. I've cleaned 500+ infected machines and NOT a single one was as screwed up as just installing norton. If you use FF you don't get popups from the virus anyways. The only real problem is if the pc is added to a botnet. I'd only recomend norton to the worst 1 of 30 users. I mean they'd have to be dling kiddie porn labeled as pron.jpg.exe through IE 1.0 while uninstalling windows patches and opening every attatchment they find while shitting on hackers. (Having worked tech support yes i do believe 1 in 30 people are that stupid)
I don't believe in trusting the wolves to guard the sheep.
Why would anyone sane trust the company that either a) couldn't be bothered to fix exploits, or b) doesn't have the smarts to find the exploits, to protect them?
If Microsoft can afford to find these exploits and block them using their AV product, why can't they just patch the OS? It could be the deafening sound of greed... or some other, more mundane reason.
But my basic question stands: if they can do this in AV, why can't they do it in their OS?
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It's a good idea. sure Symantec, McAfee, and the rest are going to lose some business - I doubt it'll be a big enough dent to notice. Folks that will rely on the microsoft offering will be the same people that rely on Defender for malware prevention. Those slightly more technology minded will identify the need for something more robust.
Chalk my vote up in the "its better than shipping it with a trialware sales pitch for some other crap" column.
cout >> "I have no patience to program anything useful and I hate having to write code";
You're right about this one, because you got the operator wrong: :)
cout << "I have no patience to program anything useful and I hate having to write code";
I guess I was wrong in the first place
Let me see if I get this correctly.
MS has supplied bad code for so long that an entire market has evolved around keeping that creaky wagon a bit safe. A bit like some dominant car manufacturer supplying cars without brakes, thus creating a whole aftersales market for brakes, parachutes, airbags and wall padding..
In other words, NO track record whatsoever (nil, nada, zilch) of writing anything that actually fixes the problem they have created themselves (which figures, if they ever fixed the OS properly they would no longer be selling hope - that's the whole Vista vs XP problem), and someone is supposed to trust THEM to get it right? I bet there are plans to charge for this "feature" as well at some stage.
(shakes head in disbelief that people continue to fall for this)
Insert
This is like the cigarette companies selling cancer treatments.
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