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Microsoft Admits Disabling Anti-Virus Software For Windows 10 Users (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Microsoft has admitted that it does temporarily disable anti-virus software on Windows PCs, following an competition complaint to the European Commission by a security company. In early June, Kaspersky Lab filed the complaint against Microsoft. The security company claims the software giant is abusing its market dominance by steering users to its own anti-virus software. Microsoft says it implemented defenses to keep Windows 10 users secure. In an extensive blog post that does not directly address Kaspersky or its claims, Microsoft says it bundles the Windows Defender Antivirus with Windows 10 to ensure that every single device is protected from viruses and malware. To combat the 300,000 new malware samples being created and spread every day, Microsoft says that it works together with external anti-virus partners. The technology giant estimates that about 95% of Windows 10 PCs were using anti-virus software that was already compatible with the latest Windows 10 Creators Update. For the applications that were not compatible, Microsoft built a feature that lets users update their PCs and then reinstall a new version of the anti-virus software. "To do this, we first temporarily disabled some parts of the AV software when the update began. We did this work in partnership with the AV partner to specify which versions of their software are compatible and where to direct customers after updating," writes Rob Lefferts, a partner director of the Windows and Devices group in enterprise and security at Microsoft.
a few AV programs. We have 31 programs we consider mission critical. All of them worked under XP, and the upgrade to 10 from 7 disabled nine of them. Microsoft stopped caring about backwards compatibility a long time ago.
More accurate: Microsoft admits disabling outdated incompatible AV software that was not updated in a timely manner by their vendors to support the newest version of Windows before their users upgraded. Microsoft also ensured these users would remain protected by enabling the built-in AV protection since the users were not guaranteed to have any other compatible AV software installed.
In order to understand why Microsoft may have logically chosen to do that for their CUSTOMERS, you would have to understand drivers. All pro-active virus scanning software sits in the driver stack. They intercept operating system calls to try to determine whether you're about to run i_h4x0r3d_j00.exe and prevent that from happening. Microsoft drivers also happen to sit in the same driver stack along with everyone else's. They all sit at a particular "altitude" in that driver stack. Some versions of software that are signed drivers that sit in this stack interfere with other drivers in that stack. Microsoft most likely proactively decided that instead of being like "I can't update X because of your crappy third party software that doesn't work right" to temporarily disable it, so they could apply the updates and then re-enable it or their product afterwards.
Now I realize that doesn't make for as sensational news story as something that implies Microsoft purposefully disabling other competitors software but it's more likely that something like what I said is the case. I hate to disappoint you. Cheers!
We'll make great pets
In an enterprise you can
Digitally sign the macro
Add the certificate to the trusted publishers
Set the machine to only run trusted content in Office.
I've helped a customer with this in the past.