Sophos ~ Tells McAfee and Symantec they should have been prepared for Vista

DavidGP · Oct 23, 2006

Well if was Kaspersky first that said MS had done nothing to stop them developing their own Antivirus software ( as well as fully working AVs from Grisoft and Awil ), dispite what Symantec and McAfee have tried to say in many press releases.

Now Sophos joins in and states, and I will quote:

However, Sophos argues that its approach to HIPS technology has met with no problems on both the low-spec and high-spec versions of Windows Vista. In addition, Sophos claims that Microsoft has so far provided all the interfaces that Sophos needs for providing this form of protection.
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Full text:
http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2006/10/vista-admins.html?_log_from=rss

augiedoggie · Oct 23, 2006

Me thinks that they doth protest too much. They rode on the backs of MS's lack of focus on security and were living the high-life selling their shiny cute boxes and bad-mouthing MS for it's lack of security. Now that MS has gone the way of security first, I have the feeling that they are fighting for their corporate lives. I did read somewhere that they don't want to reprogram for Vista, therefore the kerfuffle. Only my opinion being an expert at nothing.

DavidGP · Oct 23, 2006

Augie, you think exactly like me, I feel that both Mcafee and Symantec just wanted to add some new GFX and the odd new bit to the older AV cores of theirs, which they have basically done in the past few years and passed them off as NEW!

This time to get them to work with Vista they couldnt choose the easy option and would have had to start from scratch and reprogram the core AV and have cost them money.

Whats the funniest bit of the lot is that both Mcafee and Symantec have Enterprise beta versions of their new AVs that do work with Vista ( or did last time I bothered to check ) ! Just its not their biggest profit selling products, and bundled with many new OEM PCs.

Scaremongering at its best.

Bladesofhalo · Oct 23, 2006

Why do all the crappy anti-virus software makers have to go integrate themselves with Vista, anyone know if AVG, Avast, or NOD32 will support Vista also? That be much better IMO

theefool · Oct 23, 2006

Avast! works on Vista. Though, I do believe Mcafee and Symantec were mosly complaining about patchgaurd which is only included with x64 version of vista.

prometheos · Oct 25, 2006

theefool said:

Avast! works on Vista. Though, I do believe Mcafee and Symantec were mosly complaining about patchgaurd which is only included with x64 version of vista.
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The x64 version is the big money version and Microsoft wants to have the kernel code running exclusively at the highest security priority. (hardware ring 0). This means that all AV programs and all hacker programs will have great difficulty to compromise the kernel for any reason. That sounds very good and I applaud Microsoft for this noble concept. However, Microsoft's spin doctors forgot to mention that all the device drivers will also load at "ring 0" security level. So any buggy driver will instantly allow the "black hats" to exploit a flaw and compromise the otherwise protected kernel. Thus, the patch-exploit cycle begins once again. However, Microsoft has this covered, and they'll make big bucks from their own "pay to play" Antivirus Suite, which I'm sure will be granted "ring 0" security clearance to deal with those "buggy driver" exploits. Vista x64 "coulda bin a contenda". Now I'm not so sure.
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Sophos ~ Tells McAfee and Symantec they should have been prepared for Vista

DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

augiedoggie The Canadian Loon - LocoAugie (R.I.P. 2012)

DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

Bladesofhalo MajorGeek

theefool Geekified

prometheos Staff Sergeant