It seems the faith in Microsoft from the security industry is at an all time low, not surprising really with the amount of flaws that have been coming out in both the OS and the crapware forced upon its users like Internet Explorer Exploder.
Anti-virus firms at Infosec say they expect Vista and IE7 to change nothing for the industry. Microsoft used its presence at the show to laud the security features they’ve been busy building in the the upcoming software.
In particular, Microsoft was eager to talk about how Vista will finally jettison the need to run Windows as an administrator most of the time.
Basically what they are saying is, your mom, your gran and anyone else technically unsavvy is still going to be subjected to huge risks, even if they upgrade to Vista. Nothing is going to change in essence.
Eugene Kaspersky, founder of the eponymous Russian AV outfit said he expects the new privilege regime to have little effect. He said: “Of course they [virus writers] will find a way round it. Within a year there will be something like a rootkit for Vista.”
John Kay, Chief Technical Officer at Blackspider reckons on a “bug per line of code”. With the traditionally Heath-Robinsonian construction of MS browsers he’s not hopeful for IE7. He said: “I dread to think how many lines of code there are in there.”
1 bug per line of code? Amazingly bad, but I don’t think it would be quite so terrible. Even so, the people in the know say Windows is the worst hodge podge of spaghetti coding they’ve ever seen. It was pretty much confirmed when the Win2k & NT4 source code leaked out.
Let’s all stick to *nix & Open Source hey, but then that’s not perfect either. At least it’s improving at a rate of knots…I’m just waiting for Firefox to have a decent Bookmark manager ;)
Source: The Register
There could be a reason why AV firms like Kaspersky are crying hoarse about “privilege regime not being effective enough”. With the security components in Vista like MS Antispyware/MS defender, I think these guys are simply running scared.
It may not be a valid reason, but MS entering into AV arena would surely become a reason of worry for ALL the AV companies. Irrespective of how bad (or good) they would develop the “acquisition”.
And lets face it, AV companies thrive on the premise of windows not being secure enuff. Adding a bit of FUD to it helps sales charts too.
It is probably a little of both. Vista will be (hopefully) more secure than XP/2000, but of course there will be viruses. Worst case, virus writers will just say that you need admin rights to install this software, people will not know what is going on, log in as admin and just like that a virus is on your computer. People will probably always need an antivirus program. So I don’t think that the Symantecs/McAfees/Kaperskys of the world should be worried about not being able to sell their products because a user has Windows Vista.
Yeah it’s definately to the advantage of the AV firms to spread some good FUD about Vista before it’s release so everyone runs to get the next generation super cool antivirus programs for Vista..
MS definately is starting to develop its own Security products with its whater Microsoft Security Center…so the AV/Firewall/Spyware firms are getting a little worried.