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AV-Test Deems Windows Security Essentials "Very Good"
CWmike writes "Microsoft's new free security software, Windows Security Essentials, passed a preliminary antivirus exam with flying colors, said independent and trusted firm AV-Test, which tested Essentials, launched yesterday in beta, on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. It put it up against nearly 3,200 common viruses, bot Trojans and worms, said Andreas Marx, one of the firm's managers. The malware was culled from the most recent WildList, a list of threats actually actively attacking computers. 'All files were properly detected and treated by the product,' Marx said in an e-mail. 'That's good, as several other [antivirus] scanners are still not able to detect and kill all of these critters yet.' It also tested well on false positives."
viruses, trojans, and worms, are all nice and dandy but what about malware? That is what most people have to worry about these days.
MS is lifting their game.exe
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Norton, Symantec and others have created an entire multi-billion dollar subscription based industry around virus protection for Windows. I wonder how they are going to react to this potential bomb for there business model?
Should be interesting to see if the current AV vendors try the anti-trust card with MS for this. I imagine it will be a vary hard case to make since really all they are trying to do is fix their broken OS.
It's interesting, but at this point can Microsoft really convince anyone that they are serious about putting out a quality product? I think that is there biggest problem here... PR.j I will admit I laughed when I saw the article, and it is Microsoft's reputation that made me laugh. Maybe it is good, but I am I really willing to give them the chance with something that important?
I can remember articles talking about Windows Firewall in the past as being pretty darn good too, yet it seems the first thing a tech person does is to deactivate these days.
Let's face it. If Microsoft was seriously competent about doing these "core" activities, would the 3rd party market be as big as it is?
In any case it will be interesting if they start shipping Windows with this pre-installed. Then maybe the manufacturers won't be so quick to bundle Norton/McAffee with their products, and THAT will be fun to watch.
With all that talent, resources, and internal knowledge they should have a slam dunk. Unfortunately I have a lot of distrust built up from over the years about what MS sticks under the hood. It will take many years of good reviews and endorsements before I feed comfortable that the MS AV does not give any special passes to iffy software from a MS partner, or that the MS firewall will correctly block things from going out when configured to if the originator is an MS component.
The Microsoft style is to solve problems by throwing a lot of people at it, and they use that strategy fairly well. Instead of simplifying the structure to where it can be reasonably dealt with by a small group of people, they are happy to make it big. For example, compare the number of system calls in the windows kernel with the number in the Linux kernel. Having so many more system calls means each internal refactor will have to take more into consideration, as well as requiring more testing, but it's ok, Microsoft is happy to throw lots of testers at it. The ASP.net model, which basically wraps a whole system around html/javascript to encapsulate it and make it easier for the average programmer was an amazingly man-hour intensive job, once again requiring lots of testing and many special cases, and yet Microsoft did it.
That operating style is especially well suited to AV software, because it is a job that can be easily broken up and handed out to different programmers, and catching all the viruses is a job that can be easily helped if you have a lot of programmers and testers. It makes sense that Microsoft would write good AV software.
Qxe4
So far it's been running very well. I would presume that they should be able to make something that will protect their own operating system after all they did code it.
It's always been this way. Microsoft rests on their laurels until an upstart company starts making money at their expense. Between Mac, Linux, and the insane proliferation of general crapware, MS has a real image problem on their hands. Luckily for Microsoft, the best and the brightest can be wooed by the kind of money they're able to throw around. When they throw their top programmers at a job, the results are stunning, just witness the turnaround from early Vista to the current beta of Windows 7.
Sadly, the end result will be bad for consumers. Other security companies will be badly hurt by the release of this freebie, and MS will go back to sleep, leaving the security marketplace to stagnate like the pre-Firefox browser market stagnated.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
So I decided i'd check it out for my XP box.... "Not available in your country or region You appear to be in a country or region where the Microsoft Security Essentials Beta is unavailable. This beta is available only to customers in the United States, Israel (English only), People's Republic of China (Simplified Chinese only) and Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese only). " So...not Canada? *sigh* Well, time for Nod32 or kaspersky I guess...
A computer consultant advocating Windows is like a doctor prescribing cigarettes. It creates a lot of extra work.
Because people will download and install anything? Even OSX was hit recently with people pirating the iwork suite.
Right here.
If Mac's had 90% of the user base such as Microsoft does you would see the same problem with Macs or Linux even. It has nothing to do with system security it's simply that PC's are who virus programmers target.
Microsoft should not be making antivirus software. It should be fixing its vulnerabilities.
The OS has many fundamental problems, some of which cannot be resolved without redesigning the core internals which would render all older software incompatible any newer version of the OS. This sort of problem was identified long ago, but it was decided that the cost of change would be too great, the burden on third party software vendors too heavy and ultimately, it would be too slow to adopt and migrate for all users. And the longer they wait for this eventuality, the more expensive and prohibitive it becomes to make such important changes.
If this sounds like the U.S. moving from Imperial measurements to the globally accepted Metric system, you wouldn't be alone in this observation.
Microsoft still cannot fix the "stupid user" problem but there are many things they could fix if they had the balls to do it. And they could take a page out of Deep Freeze's playbook and create a system where the user must first unlock the system before they can install anything. But perhaps the similarity to the adoption of the metric system doesn't stop here. Perhaps there will come a point at which everyone will move on to another system leaving the "imperial" one behind... well I can dream can't I?
Too bad apache proves you wrong.
This is an old, tired and false argument. If any OS had the holes windows does it would get exploited like mad.
When you consider all the extra crap they ship with their OS, including something that is actually useful like this should have been done 10 years ago.
love is just extroverted narcissism
'All files were properly detected and treated by the product,'
Aren't there other attacks besides file-based ?? This sounds rather silly!
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
Did you not read about the Apache security flaw that was posted on Slashdot just this week?
Try using it.
1.
A shell that uses objects is asinine.
It looks like a bunch of java idiots tried to make a shell. If I wanted objects I would use a programming language, this is supposed to be scripting.
2. No ssh, lame.
3. does not support anything like authorized_keys.
Redmond WA, June 24 2009. Microsoft is proud to announce today its acquisition of independent and trusted testing firm AV-Test. Details of the transaction are not immediately available but rumors involve a large cash payment and real estate on a remote Caribbean island.
Then != than you morons.
The sad reality of the fact seems to be that in order to secure a typical Windows network in this day and age requires a multi-tiered approach. You need some sort of proxy/web filter software to block known malicious sites outright, and also to do some sort of packet inspection/exploit detection on the open connections. You then need some sort of software to protect the browser itself, like Windows Defender (if you are running IE). As a last line of defense, you need anti-virus software running on the local workstation. Also worth noting if you're hosting email in house and forwarding that email to Windows clients, you need AV on the email server, and some sort of anti-spam box in front of the email server.
A real shell?
Having to install cygwin is kinda a pain. No powershell does not count.
Way to craft your requirements in such a way that they're impossible to meet. What is a "real" shell? And what features does your "real" shell require that PowerShell doesn't have?
Let me guess, a "real" shell is defined as "a shell that Microsoft is not currently shipping."
Comment of the year
Defender is Anti-Spyware only. Security Essentials is Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware combined, so it effectively replaces Defender outright.
"Oh wow 1 flaw, BFD."
Well, you have to add them all up you see..
Its a social problem, not a technical one.
All UAC did was train people to press "Yes" on every dialog even more zealously than before. A system based around asking important questions to people who neither understand or care is not a good one. sudo works because everyone using it does care.
What MS is doing here is clever IMO. Instead of trusting the user to not do anything dumb, they've instead given them a big "Press me to fix your computer" button to wail on. People will see their computer is being slow, hit the button and hopefully the problem will be fixed.
Has anyone tried this out yet to see what the performance hit is?
Viruses don't target server environments. That's pretty much by definition - as they require active user interaction to spread.
Exploits are a different thing, but, really, have you looked at vulnerability stats in Apache vs IIS6/7 lately? Try it, you might be surprised.
As opposed to a "real" office suite being defined as one that is compatible with Microsoft Office?
If you weren't so eager to install software provided by random slashdotters, perhaps you wouldn't need the beta...
It has had much more patches over the year and I'm not conviced that an actively developped open source project like this is more vulnerable because more holes are found. That might be a sign that it's easier to locate in apache than IIS but does not mean they are non existent and unknown to the wrong people in IIS.
To sum it up: you don't care about any numbers I might show you, you just firmly believe that Apache is more secure, simply because it's OSS.
So, is there any point to discuss it further, then?