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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.
Yup.
I work for a global organization with over 200k employees scattered in various countries. While each location has it's own company name, company culture and business segment, one thing is universally enforced by our mother company.
Fucking McAfee. It's even version 8.8 if you can believe that.
Every single morning when I get to work that stupid POS AV scanner insists to make a complete scan of my PC and is set to high priority.
So, for 30 minutes each day it is impossible to actually use my computer.
In our company, we have had our network swamped several times with viruses (all while running McAfee).
Meanwhile, at home, none of my computers have anti.virus. Just the built-in windows 10 security suite. I download plenty of shady things from shady sources and I have never gotten a virus. Plus.. my pc's are usable.
In my recent experience all the viruses/malware that have bitten us (and have gone undetected by AV) have leveraged 1) Powershell (by running a Base-64 encoded payload) and 2) Office Macros (which end users stupidly allow)
If our admins had universal "only ever run pre-approved Powershell scripts" and "never run Office Macros" configured on our Windows machines, security incidents would probably drop by 80-90%.
As I look at my fridge compressor, oh, look, 85V-247V, 50-60Hz. That covers from Brazil to every EU country.
Is it truly unreasonable to ask your macro developers to sign code before they distribute it in your enterprise? You aren't asking them to make a pilgrimage to the oracle, you are asking them to open the document and go to Developer >> Code >> Visual Basic >> Tools >> Digital Signature >> and pick a certificate.
"It's hard" is why enterprises have huge numbers of unsigned Java apps and ActiveX controls that IT has to manually whitelist. Spend the half-hour it takes to learn to do it right and then "It's hard" isn't an excuse anymore.