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Botched Security Update Cripples Thousands of Computers
girlmad writes "Thousands of PCs have been crippled by a faulty update from security vendor Malwarebytes that marked legitimate system files as malware code. The update definition meant Malwarebytes' software treated essential Windows.dll and .exe files as malware, stopping them running and thus knocking IT systems and PCs offline, leaving lots of unhappy users and one firm with 80% of its servers offline."
...is all I use these days.
Of course since Windows is "out of favor" here, one does not necessarily mention that Microsoft's "Security Essentials" is easily as good as most commercial Windows anti-malware packages, and much more "light weight". And free. And yes, everyone knows that Microsoft purchased the original technology (so what?) ...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
How many viruses your antivirus caught recently? How many CPU cycles the same antivirus burned through as you were opening files on your computer?
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I haven't seen a virus in a decade. The majority of successful attacks are based on social engineering and on 0-day exploits of vulnerable code. An antivirus is not such a great help here. But antivirus companies are sitting pretty because the audience is conditioned that any PC must have an antivirus.
"AV-TEST institute" is well known to require financial investment for a top rating, their recommendations - such that they are - are highly suspect.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Basically "stop doing stupid things with your computer".
Why a firm needed Malware Bytes on it's servers in the first place is the real question here.
1.) I've been using MS Security Essentials for YEARS without issue and have it running on many machines also without issue, not it does not catch EVERYTHING; but nothing does. It does a pretty damn good job for something ad-free, shitware-bundle free. Other than the occasional annoying "OMG YOU HAVEN'T SCANNED ANYTHING!@#!@ orange flagged monopoly house ! warning, is pretty unobtrusive.
2.) All Windows versions prior to 8 could also use Windows Defender in addition, if you want to, but they've been rolled together under the Windows Defender name and are included by default in Windows 8.
3.) Microsoft also has a Malwarebytes-like scanner called Safety Scanner although it auto-expires after 10 days and has to be reinstalled for subsequent use; no idea why.
4.) 0-day exploits by definition would be more or less impossible to defend against, wtf is the problem? I'm no MS fanboy, but the hate here is unwarranted, they're basically risking massive lawsuits against them again for anti-trust by even doing this and frankly it's about fucking time they should have had all of these tools available from its inception.
5.) Malwarebytes has gone from a must-have awesome malware scanner to total shit adware in the typical bait-and-switch style business model of the day which goes something like a.) build something awesome b.) give it away for free c.) change to paid model with your own bundled malware and bullshit once it gets popular d.) crash and burn e.) laugh all the way to the bank.
Where I work uses Sophos, I would say it's far worse (and used more as an attempt at draconian control than really A/V, and does next to nothing for malware, updates fail constantly, etc), and I've actively advised people to not use Macfee and Norton for a very long time because of all their dumb bullshit problems. Clamwin is still pretty terrible and ridiculously slow, after all these years. I think the only one I've never used at all is Kapspersky, or whatever.
$.02
From the "article"
Disclosure
Symantec Corporation funded the production of this report, selected the test metrics and list of products to
include in this report, and supplied some of the test scripts used for the tests.
Hmm...