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MS To Build Antivirus Into Win8: Boon Or Monopoly?

Posted by Soulskill on from the efficacy-to-be-determined dept.

jfruhlinger writes "Microsoft has quietly announced that it's planning on baking anti-virus protection right into the Windows 8 OS. Users have been criticizing Windows' insecurity for years — but of course this move is raising howls of protest from anti-virus vendors, who have built a nice business out of Windows' security holes. Is this a good move by Microsoft, or a leveraging of their monopoly as bad as bundling Internet Explorer?"

4 of 748 comments (clear)

  1. Anti-Trust by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would love to see governments attacking Microsoft for making its software too secure. That would keep me laughing for years.

    1. Re:Anti-Trust by jbolden · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Capability computing. You don't grant applications the rights of a user. Rather an application is granted the right to do X to thing Y. So getting access to a user's file doesn't mean access to all of them. Some other problem controls granting capabilities.

      As an aside the NT kernel 3.51 had an excellent capabilities and Windows still has it. Microsoft just never made their own software, including the shell / GUI work with it.

  2. Good for consistency; bad because of consistency by show+me+altoids · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think this would be a great idea as long as MS keeps it well updated and people don't rely just on it. It would immediately improve the security of the PCs of all the people who don't bother with antivirus, but it may lull others into a false sense of security and give them an incentive to not get any other antivirus which would put a target for virus writers squarely on MS's solution.

    --
    I feel sorry for people that don't drink, because when they get up in the morning, that's as good as they're gonna feel
  3. Bill was right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Bill Gates was right. Microsoft had every right to add whatever features and applications it wanted to its OSes. Look at Chrome OS, Android, Mac OS X, iOS. All have browsers and other applications "built-in". In fact, Chrome OS doesn't even allow you to use an alternate browser, while Windows always allowed this. Adding non-intrusive and automatic antivirus to Windows 8 is a step forward.