Microsoft Ships Antivirus For macOS as Windows Defender Becomes Microsoft Defender (arstechnica.com)

Microsoft is bringing its Windows Defender anti-malware application to macOS -- and more platforms in the future -- as it expands the reach of its Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) platform. From a report: To reflect the new cross-platform nature, the suite is also being renamed to Microsoft Defender ATP, with the individual clients being labelled "for Mac" or "for Windows." macOS malware is still something of a rarity, but it's not completely unheard of. Ransomware for the platform was found in 2016, and in-the-wild outbreaks of other malicious software continue to be found. Apple has integrated some malware protection into macOS, but we've heard from developers on the platform that Mac users aren't always very good at keeping their systems on the latest point release. Further reading: Microsoft launches previews of Windows Virtual Desktop and Defender ATP for Mac.

Comments

the audacity

[izzo nizzo]

This is the height of arrogance. Microsoft's poor architecture is responsible for all the spam and viruses and e-waste in the world. They're the reason why everyone has to rely on Google rather than running their own SMTP. They created entire industries of fraud that have led much of the developing world into lives of crime.

Telemetry vector?

[kbonin]

Reminds me of Microsoft Visual Studio Code - lots of people at work raved about this app, but when I tried it on my MacBook its as full of telemetry as any Windows 10 app - no thanks! (Without Radio Silence to firewall outbound connections...) Since A/V normally has elevated permissions, and Microsoft's attitude about telemetry seems to be 'your computer and your data are ours and you can't do anything about it', how can we trust this?

Expanding it's data collection to MacOS now?

[QuietLagoon]

Since the Windows 10 data collection system doesn't run on Macs, is Microsoft using Microsoft Defender as a foot in the door to get data collection installed on Macs?

DOS variants

[DrYak]

You do realize ms dos was an unlawful Rip-off of dr dos, right?

You're confusing the names.

Your mixing it up with Q-DOS, that's the thing that Microsoft ripped to quickly produce MS-DOS and license as PC-DOS to IBM.

DR-DOS is the earlya attempt at bringing multi-tasking to DOS, by Digital Research, the company making the *other* major OS back then i.e.: CP/M - the OS that inspired QDOS, and that Digital Research didn't manage to license to IBM.

QDOS and thus MS-DOS being close to CP/M was a big point for Microsoft. As said above CP/M was the major OS at the time, and having a very similar API meant that application developper could quickly writes port of their software for PC-DOS on the IBM PC.

DR-DOS also leverage the closeness: it's based on Concurrent DOS, which is based on CP/M-86 (which eventually added MS-DOS compatibility) and the whole CP/M family explored multi-tasking with MP/M-86 (including MP/M-86, direct predecessor of Concurrent DOS)).

Digital Research was a significant competitor to Microsoft, that's why Microsoft tried to crush them as much as possible.
(Including making the DOS-based Windows harder to run on DR-DOS)