Intel Buys McAfee

Several readers have noted that Intel has agreed to buy McAfee, the computer antivirus software maker, for about $7.7 billion in cash. There is also a press release available if you are into that sort of thing.

Comments

Will they kill it?

[guruevi]

Pretty please? Just give all their victims - I mean customers - their money back and just kill it off already. McAfee has no right even existing.

Re:Will they kill it?

[couchslug]

If you want to drive demand for new processors, sell bloatware. :P

Re:Will they kill it?

[cgenman]

But McAfee has given so many people so much incentive to upgrade to faster processors.

Re:Will they kill it?

[JeffSpudrinski]

One has to wonder what Intel was thinking. The *only* thing McAfee had of any worth was name recognition, and due to their total frak up back in April, their name gets recognized for the wrong reason.

We recently moved our corporate network away from McAfee due to lack of decent support.

Just my $0.02.

-JJS

Re:Will they kill it?

[pseudorand]

> And deprive millions of corporate IT drones of their false sense of security?!?!? Are you insane, man???

It's not the IT drones that you'd be depriving of a false sense of security, it's users and management. Most of us drones realize AV doesn't do much other than bloat our budgets, slow down our systems and waste our time. But the sense of security we get from it is not that we're protected from viruses but that we're protected from the criticism that we didn't do everything possible to prevent a virus attack should be we be infected. Imagine a virus takes down lots of computers on your network. Your boss's boss or your internal audit department comes around asking what AV software you were running. Do you really want to answer "none"? Even if you know full well that McAfee, Symantec and the like had no protection from that virus, explaining this to the higher-ups wouldn't be pretty.

Holy cow

[mike260]

That junk is worth $7bn?

Re:Holy cow

[RabbitWho]

I think we're all thinking that. I'm so amazed at this. Someone paid 7 billion for the right to sell people magic beans.

Re:Holy cow

[gad_zuki!]

I imagine intel has watched the home AV market get gobbled up by MS Security Essentials and may want to join in the free for home use game.

I'd love to see a shakeup in the AV industry as its pretty terrible right now. I'm sick of seeing machines with horrible infections because the trial of the AV has expired. End users cannot be trusted to maintain subscriptions for something they barely understand. I also imagine intel is so deeply in bed with MS that AV is now their problem as well.

McAfee's enterprise products sell for whatever reason. I imagine those will continue to be expensive.

Re:Holy cow

[Binestar]

The only virus's I've seen infect machines recently are what I call "0-day" viruses. Ones that were released that day. I've also found that they come in 2 pieces. the "obvious" virus portion (AV 2010 and the like) and a rootkit that gets attached to a random driver file in %windir%\system32\drivers. They completely hide themselves from a scan run with the local machine, and you either have to boot a livecd or yank the drive and scan in another PC. Waiting 24 hours or more for the definition to be updated before you can even detect the file. It's a race. Malware writers get about 24 hours of use out of a specific variant they write and they know it. I wish I had the link, but I remember a report saying that new variants of the AV2010 series has upto 2 releases a day to keep ahead of the antivirus programs ability to detect.

Re:Holy cow

[tlhIngan]

I don't get why intel would buy a software company in the first place, much less one that makes not-so-great antivirus software. Seems to me they should have put that huge wad of cash into R&D.

Simple - to drive sales of their core product.

Intel has a TON of software. Each in some way is to drive sales of Intel processors. Sure you still have to pay for them, but that money's just peanuts. E.g., their compilers emit code optimized for their processors (of course, they also emit crap for non-Intel CPUs).

This AV thing might be for Intel to explore new ways of protecting computers. And of course, it'll only be availble on Intel CPUs. (I still remember what, 10 years ago AMD sent out "care packages" that illustrated why their CPUs were better, and they were touting NX bit).

It's just like Apple and the iTunes/App store. Apple isn't in the music, TV show, movie or software distribution business. Yet by doing so, it complements their core products (iPods, iPhones, iPads) helping them sell. Apple's "pro" apps and consumer levels apps are there to help move Macs.

It's all about complementary markets - they don't need it, and probably don't make much money off those products, but it helps generate core business sales.

Re:Holy cow

[Kaboom13]

This is my experience as well. The old "use an up to date AV and don't browse porn sites" line is completely outdated. The modern source of infection is either through using exploits in rarely patched software (Adobe, Flash, Java, etc.) combined with using SEO techniques to boost malware sites to the top of google rankings for big breaking news stories, infecting wordpress and other blog systems en masse, and infecting the servers used to host advertising on major sites (or just buying the advertising straight up and redirecting it to malware after it goes live). A lot of them don't even rely on an exploit, they just make it appear that a site they trust is telling them they need to download something, so they do.

The variants change multiple times a day, and no AV product can keep up. Once installed they install rootkits that hide them from the AV. The rootkit part normally fails on Vista/Win 7, but the usermode still runs, and users will happily click an escalation prompt. The only defense is to lock machines down tight enough nothing unauthorized can be run on them and users don't have admin rights (note that I didnt say don't run as admin. Sudo won't help you here. They will enter the admin credentials anyways, because users are dumb and don't read things) . I've taken to doing some forensics on some of the pc's that come by me with fake av, and about 90% of the time, at the time of the infection they were reasonably up to date, had working AV, and from the browser history were on normal, everyday sites like msn.com or whatever immediately before being infected.

AV is useless for the new generation of exploits, at least in it's current form.

Re:Holy cow

[GameboyRMH]

"don't browse porn/warez sites" was somewhat outdated advice in the late 90s/early 2000s, and is totally irrelevant today. Viruses are now served to users through scripts in ads while they browse perfectly legit sites. I wouldn't be surprised if the porn/warez sites were cleaner in terms of malware.

Strange

[lennier1]

Couldn't they have bought something that's actually worth the money?

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you rather do a stock swap and let the people who made mcafee into such a successful enterprise with a strong product portfolio have a say in what intel does?

Wow, Intel jumps the shark

[DeafDumbBlind]

WTF are they thinking. Granted they're sitting on a pile of cash, but this is silly.
If I were an INTC shareholder I would be pretty pissed off.
If they were looking for something to do with the cash, they should have just paid out a nice dividend.

Re:Wow, Intel jumps the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

This is corporate policy for about 30-40 years now. Since the 70's (and each successive decade it has only gotten worse), businesses have grown through mergers and acquisition. This serves a dual purpose of allowing monopolies to grow while killing off competition. It's just so much easier to do business this way.

It doesn't even matter if the buyout was a good one. Imagine this scenario. A large investor (2%) in McAfee buys a large chunk of Intel stock (1%). He's now one of the largest owners, and the board at intel gets chummy with him, since they need his good graces to keep their jobs. He suggests buying McAfee. When they do, his investment in McAfee pays off. He's then free to sell off his Intel stock at a similar price for what he bought it.

It's capitalism in action. He takes his capital, throws his weight around, and makes more money. Remember, it's important to keep his capital gain taxes low so that doesn't experience any loss whatsoever when all this investment money trickles down. It's going to get down here one day. I believe!

Lycos part deux

[aliens]

I can see it now 10 years from now, just like Lycos, "McaFee purchased for $7.7 billion in 2010, sold for $200 million in 2015 has just been sold again today for $34 million to some company in Vietnam." Seriously, has anyone personal or enterprise had good experiences with their products?

Goal: boost need for per clock cycle performance

[SlappyBastard]

Good move by Intel. If people become desperate for better per clock cycle performance, they'll favor the new Intel chips over AMD. And what program ropes your computer and drags it down faster than McAfee?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just diversifying their portfolio or are there other objectives at work?

They're gonna add even more bloat, sucking more CPU cycles, forcing people to upgrade, and therefore buy more Intel CPUs.

Re:Why?

[WrongSizeGlass]

It's just a research venture. Intel is trying to figure out how McAfee can use up so much of a CPU that it should be put out of its misery.

Perfect match

[Tridus]

Intel needs people to think they need these faster multi core CPUs they keep cranking out.

And who is better at slowing Windows down to the point of uselessness then Mcafee?

It's a perfect fit. We'll see you slow, bloated software, then also sell you CPUs to make your computer usable.

Hardware-based AV?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like this is the logical goal. Integrate AV at the hardware level and you should see a significant performance increase, plus tasty vendor lock-in.

Re:Hardware-based AV?

[magus_melchior]

Or, on a more cynical note, they can undercut AMD and Via by offering a really sweet deal on AV software for OEMs. McAfee may make a lot of bank in the enterprise, but if they can get more OEM sales of home PCs/netbooks with McAfee software on them, that means a LOT of easy money for Intel.

Devious and underhanded, but it's what I've come to expect from them.

Re:Bizarro world we live in

[zlogic]

What's so bad with Intel's drivers? Even though some are outdated (especially for outdated HW) and don't have fancy GUIs doesn't mean it's broken. I've been using Intel's drivers (chipsets, grahics, storage) for 10+ years, didn't have a single problem. Unlike nVidia or ATI where uninstallation doesn't necessary mean the software is completely removed and the drivers keep crashing. And ATI drivers look even uglier than Intel's.

McAfee is crap

[SpryGuy]

Why does anyone use McAfee? It's crap. In my life I've only ever had two "infections" on my PC... both while McAfee was installed and running. It costs money, and yet free alternatives (like Microsoft Security Essentials) typically rank better in terms of protection. And it constantly causes slow-downs, hangs, and even crashes. It's just utter crap. Why would anyone use it? It should be left to die on the vine.

If you currently use McAfee, you should immediately uninstall it (and top paying for it!) and install Microsoft Security Essentials instead. Say good-bye to the bloat and slowness and other complicated crap, as well as the expense.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds plausible they might "fix it" and by that I mean make it run faster on Intel processors and not AMD. Or they might go ahead and build in some extra hardware so that McAfee "works best with Intel Core i9 processors"

YOU ARE EDUCATED EVIL!

[Thud457]

Why in the name of timecube are you running Oracle on an architecture that McAfee can even run on?!!!

Re:Uh

[daveime]

Units off by at least 1 Library of Congress ...

0.068 Cubic Inches x 77000000 pieces = 5236000 Cubic Inches = 3030 cubic feet.

Re:What???

[gstoddart]

They have encryption software -- making those less CPU intensive (especially for cell phone and other mobile use) might actually be moderately useful.

Intel doesn't have any corporate interests in making things less CPU intensive. They'll give you more power in the same wattage, or the same power with less wattage.

But, really, the more you need to upgrade hardware the better.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Worth every penny ...

[BitZtream]

Lots of comments and jokes here about the worth of McAfree ...

And you've got it almost completely wrong. The value of McAfree isn't in their software, its in the fact that it comes preinstalled on a massive amount of computers, it has a subscription model for recurring revenue and LOTS of people use it.

The fact that their flagship product is a pile of crap is irrelevant because people buy it anyway, without hesitation.

McAfee Antivirus might suck and be next to worthless, but McAfee the company is worth a lot of money because people are too ignorant to get the first part.

Second, as far as system slow down, and this one hurts as I hate defending such shitty products ... but ...

ALL ON-DEMAND SCANNERS KILL PERFORMANCE. They open and scan every file (EVERY file, not just exe and dlls) before passing the result along to the actual program.

There is no way around this, the data must be check before it can be used in order to be safe. Well, no matter how fast you right code, it takes a while to scan all the files that go into making even a simple program run. There are thousands of files that get openned when an app like Firefox for Photoshop starts running, and all of those files get read into memory and checked ... BEFORE they are passed along to the app calling them. Unless you invent time bending or something, this will always end up taking a very noticeable amount of time, making your computer seem slow.

Want your computer with McAfee to not run slow? Turn off on-demand scanning. Want a middle ground? Change the on-demand settings to be less agressive, but its probably not going to make much difference since the speed issue is mostly opening and reading the files in the first place.

You won't find anyone with an on-demand scanner that doesn't have these problems.

You also won't find an anti-virus company worth more other than symantec.

So yes, this was a good deal for Intel, even if most of slashdot is too blind to see the logic in the move.

I like slashdot a lot more when it was just real geeks with a clue, you know, before all the angsty idiots who happened to be socially inept and own a computer started calling it home as though they were geeks too.

Re:Why?

[m.ducharme]

Oh come on, no more McAfee, and Norton will just step into their shoes.

Re:What to do, oh what to do...

[cgenman]

5. Buy Nvidia, and have an on-board graphics card that isn't terrible.

6. Buy AMD. Twice. Getting ATI in the process. Twice.

7. Buy Analog Devices and make a play for the low-powered market.

8. Actually bring Canoe Lake to market.

9. Send everyone in the United States two stuffed Intel Bunnies.

Re:Why?

[Rigbyd]

If I still had mod points, I would mod parent up. When I heard about this my first though was about the addition of processor extensions to boost virtualization performance. I could definitely see Intel adding some new antivirus extensions to their CPUs.

That's neat in theory, but...

[Benfea]

...wouldn't you want antivirus software that doesn't suck big sweaty donkey testes? I mean, if you're going to embed it in your CPU and make it all permanent, shouldn't it be important to choose decent antivirus software?