Windows 10 does disable some third-party security software, Microsoft has admitted, but because of compatibility – not competitive – issues.
Redmond is currently being sued by security house Kaspersky Lab in the EU, Germany and Russia over alleged anti-competitive behavior because it bundles the Windows Defender security suite into its latest operating system. Kaspersky (and others) claim Microsoft is up to its Internet Explorer shenanigans again, but that's not so, said the operating system giant.
"Microsoft's application compatibility teams found that roughly 95 per cent of Windows 10 PCs had an antivirus application installed that was already compatible with Windows 10 Creators Update," said Rob Lefferts, director of security in the Windows and Devices group.
Source: The Register
Archive article: Archive.org
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Thursday June 22 2017, @06:09AM (11 children)
I cannot comment on this. It is too, too, . . . No, I cannot comment on this. Micro$oft, denying what Micro$erf made necessary? Oh, the irony! The Silvery! The Iridiumny! Can we go to irony post 11, with more cowbell? I await my rebate, for Windows98, the sucky version.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by kaszz on Thursday June 22 2017, @07:16AM (3 children)
Just a conspiracy guess. Russians (Kaspersky) have only the interests of keeping computers clean. While Microsoft is in the pocket of every three magic alphanumeric organization in the USA that you can think of and all the ones you don't know about. So Microsoft wants to make sure no one interferes with their "bugs"..
All "bugs" are oh.. our H1B messed up again and did a strcmp(NULL,NULL,-1) and so now you *must* update your DirectX that will make it phone-home. Add to that the license that forbids users from confine the whole OS into virtualization.
win10 eula [microsoft.com]
(Score: 2) by Snow on Thursday June 22 2017, @09:56PM (2 children)
You can virtualize the whole OS. That's fine. You cannot virutalize features of the software /separately/.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 22 2017, @11:56PM (1 child)
What is meant by "features of the software" ?
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday June 23 2017, @02:41PM
I'm guessing they mean doing something like Wine, but using their code.
Your guess is as good as mine.
(Score: 3, Touché) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday June 22 2017, @07:44AM (6 children)
There was an unsucky version?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday June 22 2017, @08:30AM (4 children)
Win98 was supposed to be the unsucky version of Win95, but it only increased the suck. I moved to Linux, Kernel 0.3.1, if I recall correctly. It was better. Never needed no anti-whatever.
(Score: 3, Funny) by coolgopher on Thursday June 22 2017, @01:12PM (1 child)
Ironically, the Memphis beta release was surprisingly solid, responsive and felt like a serious upgrade from Win95. Then they dropped Win98. As in, dropped it from a height and let it crater into unsuspecting people.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 23 2017, @12:43AM
We had fully working pirate versions of Windows 97 and NT 5.0 (no, not typos, that's what they installed as, splash screen and all...).
97 was pretty unstable, but more usable than 95 and 98 pre-ES2
NT 5.0 was solid, but too many game compatibility issues.
I didn't realize those install disks could become collectors... Or that a microsoft OS fitting on one CD would be a cherished memory.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday June 22 2017, @01:56PM (1 child)
Windows NT 4 was actually pretty reasonable (I ran it at home).
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @07:45PM
It always goes that way, the same way Win2K was the reasonable alternative to ME and Server 2003 was the reasonable alternative to (pre SP2) XP (which then became Server 2003 with a different skin).
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Thursday June 22 2017, @05:02PM
Windows 2000 Professional was pretty danged good, IMO. Then it went all downhill from there.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday June 22 2017, @06:25AM (1 child)
And why would anyone expect anything else? They got away with it!
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @08:17PM
It appears that Redmond traded repeated extensions of their consent decree [seattletimes.com] (with no actual enforcement/consequences) for revelations to USA.gov of every one of their backdoors. [techrights.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Soylentbob on Thursday June 22 2017, @07:30AM (7 children)
In a surprising turn of events an entity accused of wrong behaviour claims it is not so. This changes everything, all claims are immediately retracted, lets celebrate the accused.
Basically most news concerning Microsoft is valid breaking news. NT 3.5 broke a lot of Win95/ME software, NT4 broke lots of NT3.5 software, ... ... Win 8.0 broke user experience, Win 10 broke Win 8, WP8 broke Nokia, and when I need to work with that crap, after a couple of minutes I feel close to a breakdown. And the Windows VM I have also broke a couple of times.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday June 22 2017, @08:38AM
Well said, and so far so good.
"NT 3.5 broke a lot of Win95/ME software"
But now I'm cringing. Ok, that's true. But that was also expected, and not, in and of itself, anything to criticize.
95/98/ME (I prefer to think of this as 98SE, remember the best don't dwell on the rest) supported several APIs that NT did not. So of course there was no guarantee of binary compatibility.
"NT4 broke lots of NT3.5 software"
Did it? I don't doubt it did but I'm fuzzy on the details at first glance.
My personal experience was that NT3.5 was still unreliable and by the time 4.0 came out I had found a new job where I didn't have to worry about it anymore.
"Win 8.0 broke user experience"
Again, true, but holy wtf batman?!?! Like that's the first time? What the hell else do you expect? They don't like to give standards and when they do, they don't follow them. Ever since they 'invented'^w dug windows 1.0 source code out of that dumpster they've been breaking UI standards as quickly as they could invent them.
"Win 10 broke Win 8"
Nope. Win10 *partially* fixed Win8.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 22 2017, @09:35AM (5 children)
You missed Win95 broke MSDOS/Win3.11.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Soylentbob on Thursday June 22 2017, @11:47AM (1 child)
Not really :-) Basically Windows broke so many times, for so many reasons and with so many casualties in my experience that a complete list is not practical. Actually, a shorter list should have been sufficient to make my point, or a link to some external summary. I don't have the time to search for a good one, but here [bing.com] should be some hidden gems.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 22 2017, @12:15PM
After a lot if "Windows 10 broke my PC" links, in the "related searches for Windows broke my", there this pearl: "tenant broke window". Yeah, right, related indeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 22 2017, @05:57PM (2 children)
It might be easier if we list the things Win95 didn't break.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 22 2017, @08:18PM (1 child)
You're right. Here they are:
<this space intentionally left blank>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snow on Thursday June 22 2017, @09:58PM
C'mon now. The two most important applications worked fine - winmine.exe and sol.exe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @07:33AM (1 child)
I never run an anti-virus. Elite stupor geniuses just know to avoid malware.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @08:57PM
On his blog, Robert Pogson has told the story a bunch of times about when he went to teach in the far north of Canada.
This was an impoverished community that, during the winter, could only get supplies/outside service people via airplane, a very expensive proposition.
What he found when he arrived was a pile of boxes with Windoze installed.
Through usage by the students, the systems were too infected to use.
He made the effort to disinfect them but, shortly thereafter, he was back to spending time cleaning them up again.
He did some research, discovered gratis and libre Linux (he had used Unix in his work as a scientist), downloaded it, and installed it.
The required maintenance workload on those boxes dropped to near zero. [google.com] (page) [mrpogson.com]
Same hardware; same users. Different results.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday June 22 2017, @09:41AM (2 children)
Security is - and always should have been - the job of the operating system. The fact that Microsoft Windows needed external help in the area for so long? That's just embarrassing, and something that they fixed starting with Windows Defender in Win7.
While some anti-virus products did good work, too many were nearly useless, and there was a whole range of scams in this area as well. If this whole market dies out, because it isn't necessary any longer, no one will miss it.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday June 22 2017, @02:44PM (1 child)
Security is - and always should have been - the job of the operating system.
Exactly. 3rd-party products have no place here.
The fact that Microsoft Windows needed external help in the area for so long? That's just embarrassing, and something that they fixed starting with Windows Defender in Win7.
Exactly. But now they've addressed this issue, so these 3rd-party products just need to go away. It's MS's OS, and they're free to hobble or disable 3rd-party antivirus products all they want. If you don't like that, and you aren't satisfied with their built-in security measures, then find an OS that suits you better.
While some anti-virus products did good work, too many were nearly useless, and there was a whole range of scams in this area as well.
That's absolutely true too. The whole 3rd-party Windows security industry was basically a big scam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 23 2017, @04:09AM
Tell your boss you are going to install Linux or Mac on all desktops and see how long you have a job. Microsoft is considered a monopoly for a reason.
I'd love to be rid of 3rd party AV but the MS stuff isn't making that possible. The 90% score simply doesn't cut it. Would you buy a car that doesn't start 3 days a month or use a phone that misses 10% of calls or a go to a surgeon that kills one in ten patients?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @02:47PM (2 children)
Windows makes it hard to remove defender. The A/V that indexes your files and sends "samples" back to MS. It is possible though, I've removed it from 7, 8.1, and 10 and I'm much happier for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:48PM (1 child)
Can you point to instructions on how to remove Defender? Instructions that you have used would be best...
I'm currently still on Win7Pro where I can turn it off (at least it says it's off...). We are a tiny company with no dedicated IT staff, so I have to wing it, in conjunction with talking to people at my big company customers.
At some point we will probably have to move to Win10 where I understand there is no switch.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday June 22 2017, @04:14PM
Yes. It involves a Linux hybrid-format ISO, a small USB stick, and some time :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by martyb on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:11PM (2 children)
I'm by no means trying to apologize for Microsoft's actions in this particular case, but would like to point out that adding anti-malware (AM) products to your system can make them more vulnerable.
How does anti-malware work? As a gross-oversimplification, it intercepts access to potentially-infected files. To do that, it needs privileges in the OS above and beyond what a user normally has. This excess access capability in and of itself exposes an additional attack surface. Attackers can attempt to use mistakes in that additional attack surface to gain access to your system.
A quick search brought up these representative examples:
Security vendor Kaspersky Lab updated its antivirus products to fix an issue that could have exposed users to traffic interception attacks. [pcworld.com]
Critical Flaw in the popular ESET antivirus program for macOS exposes Mac users to remote code execution - patch is now available. [wccftech.com]
Trend Micro antivirus software let attackers take over computers and exposed user passwords until a Google researcher found the flaws. [tomsguide.com]
So, the question becomes, which exposes me to the greater danger?
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @06:22PM
[snip list of 3rd party fuckups]
Of course, there is no way Microsoft itself would ever have a bug like that [chromium.org] in their anti-malware product.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 23 2017, @03:46AM
That is why I refuse to use online banking if the TOS require the installation of an anti-virus.
They say you are covered if malware drains your account (if and only if you install an AV); but they won't pay to fix your computer if an anti-virus either hoses it or steals information.