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Windows Chief Suggests Vista Won't Need Antivirus
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Nov 09, 2006 09:52 PM
from the steadfastly-bulletproof dept.
from the steadfastly-bulletproof dept.
LadyDarth writes "During a telephone conference with reporters yesterday, outgoing Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin, while touting the new security features of Windows Vista, which was released to manufacturing yesterday, told a reporter that the system's new lockdown features are so capable and thorough that he was comfortable with his own seven-year-old son using Vista without antivirus software installed."
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Technology: Windows Vista Released To Manufacturing 172 comments
Many readers wrote in to make sure we know that Microsoft execs have signed off on the code and Windows Vista has been and released to manufacturing. As APC put it, "It's good to go — or as good as it is going to be until the first round of patching begins." CNN has a good roundup of Vista's long development history.
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If users can... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because a virus cannot harm the operating system does not mean it is harmless.
Re:If users can... (Score:5, Funny)
You've stumbled across their secret plan. Vista won't run programs. 99.9% of Windows problems have been traced to 'users' running 'programs'.
Parent
Also reported: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Also reported: (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Also reported (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if you consider how many times did the Apple platform switch in the recent years and how much overhead has that generated for the Apple third-party software manufacturers, not to mention how many API changes have taken place since 10.0, you'll quickly realize that Apple platform is almost as "enthusiast" as Linux. OTOH, whether you like it or not, XP in 2006 can run software made in 1995 without any problems whatsoever. All this means that businesses can get more mileage from their custom solutions and hence the market share disparity...
Parent
Hindsight being 20/20... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hindsight being 20/20... (Score:5, Funny)
Who plans on bookmarking this story so they can laugh heartily at it again in a year?
Don't need to. Just wait for it to be duped...
Parent
no antivirus? (Score:5, Insightful)
bahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahah (Score:4, Funny)
I've used XP SP2 without AV for years (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I'm using IE7 as my main browser (quiet!) and don't anticipate any problems with it, either. Heck, its *more* paranoid than FF is some of the time (it will quibble about http refresh redirects to executables, for example).
Re:I've used XP SP2 without AV for years (Score:4, Funny)
Then what do you use the internet for?
Parent
Antivirus is a cure worse than the disease (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose if you're dumb enough to think you need an Antivirus program, you probably do.
Parent
Re:I've used XP SP2 without AV for years (Score:4, Insightful)
Or your PC has been sending out millions of spam emails but you've been clueless because nothing unexpected shows up in process list and your PC isn't crashing or behaving badly as far as you can tell.
How many of the litterally millions of infected spam zombies out there do you think are on PCs who's owners "Never had a problem" with viruses? I wonder how many of them tell Mac and Linux users they are crazy for suggesting that Windows security is a bit... lax.
Parent
i have to concur (Score:5, Funny)
LIghtening fast (Score:5, Funny)
I remember.... (Score:5, Interesting)
(still have no use for XP, btw.)
Jeez.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Jeez.. (Score:5, Informative)
We used new source automation tools that removes any potential buffer overflow attacks.
News articles detailing Windows XP buffer overflow attacks are abundant [google.com].
Parent
Reminds me of what they said about Win95. (Score:5, Funny)
Titanic (Score:5, Funny)
My first thought was... (Score:5, Insightful)
all a ploy to make more $ (Score:5, Funny)
Brilliant marketing $cheme
@LiquidCoooled, about zombies (Score:5, Interesting)
vuja de (Score:5, Informative)
No system is immune to viruses. All it takes is a stupid user to allow it, and we all know there's no shortage of that. That's why antivirus products exist for every major OS out there. Even Linux has antivirus apps (though granted, most of them are geared towards Linux boxen running as servers for Windows-based networks).
Oh wait. Technically, if it requires a stupid user's interaction to get in, it's not a virus. It's a trojan. I guess Vista really could be immune to viruses....
Hmm, and where have we heard this before (Score:4, Interesting)
And the world will only need 4 computers...................
And no one would ever need a computer at home..............
Sheesh......where do they come up with this stuff?
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait until he gets older... (Score:5, Funny)
re: Hmm, and where have we heard this before (Score:5, Funny)
Yea..........and 640K will be plenty of memory..........
And the world will only need 4 computers...................
And no one would ever need a computer at home..............
Sheesh......where do they come up with this stuff?
A new one:
We will never have more than 16777215 comments.............
Anti-virus software (Score:4, Insightful)
Well gosh... (Score:5, Insightful)
NATIVE ANTIVIRUS
Seriously, isn't this what third party antivirus vendors have been whining about?
Okay... so perhaps it isn't that crazy... (Score:5, Informative)
Any OS can be virus-ridden... (Score:3, Insightful)
And XP has no buffer overflows... (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft has said it has stamped out buffer overflows with the upcoming release of Windows XP. Jim Allchin, vice president, claimed the company has done a complete code review of its operating system and removed all buffers which could overflow. [vnunet.com]
I'll let somebody else post a list of all the critical updates caused by buffer overflows...
yeah, big whoop (Score:4, Informative)
1. He didn't say he let his kid on the Internet without an AV package running.
2. He didn't say "firewall". Speaking of which, ZoneAlarm just grabbed focus and I think I let something connect out to the Internet. I'm running an installer so I'm not gonna freak out, but I certainly hope Vista won't let apps steal focus while you're fracking typing.
3. He also didn't say the kid would be online unsupervised or without parental controls running.
4. It's a safe bet to assume he meant the kid would use IE if he went online, but he didn't actually say it either.
Nothing to see here, move along.
What else is new? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had two infections on my Windows over the years--Nimda and a video codec trojan. I'm not counting the second boxes that I used to use for experiments--I never put anything important on them, so I tended to just not care, and blow away Windows when they got nasty--that was back in the bad old dialup days when potential damage to others was minimal, and Windows was a lot less secure. I don't know if AV would have stopped Nimda, because I didn't use AV back then. AV didn't stop the trojan. I used to disable AV routinely because it *is* a virus. It used to slow boxes down way too much, and cause all kinds of problems with installers. I always un-do the stupid defaults in Windows and IE, and I try not to be too careless. Nimda is really the only one I can blame on MS, and it was patched ages ago. I would probably disable AV on my current box, but they seem to have gotten better about not hogging resources and/or crashing the box so I just leave it alone.
I wonder if Vista is finally going to display extensions by default. That was always irritating. It would be *nice* if you had to enable active content on a per-site basis by default. It would be better if they just didn't have so much active content out there. Would I "just trust" a Vista box? No way. But would I run it without AV if there was none pre-installed? Yes, in a heartbeat--but I would still be very careful about how I conducted myself on the web, and I would still want to go through all the settings to make sure there was nothing stupid in there. And I would *still* be checking up on processes and registry keys from time-to-time.
But anyway, XP without AV is not a big deal--if you know what you're doing. Unfortunately, that's a big if. Nevermind 7 year olds. It's the 57 year olds that you have to worry about.
What he meant: (Score:5, Funny)
It's not the viruses you need to worry about... (Score:5, Insightful)
The main attack vectors these days seem to center on "drive by downloads" or pop ups that trick you into downloading executables ("WARNING! Your PC is infested with SPYWARE - CLICK HERE to remove"). Most Antivirus software is unbelievably pathetic when it comes to identifying/dealing with spyware. I've seen dozens of clients who have so much spyware, it can take 30 minutes or more to boot up and then spend more time closing all the popped-up windows. FF and it appears IE7 as well will hopefully go a long way to closing this attack. Now we just need to wait for everyone with win95,98,ME, NT, etc. to upgrade.
And my dog... (Score:4, Funny)
And he likely is right... (Score:4, Informative)
IIRC the only times I ever did get viruses were downloading porn or cracks. Sandbox what you can download (which at least they said they did in vista, who knows if it will be effective) and that eliminates most vectors, other than relative spam mail.
ObSimpsons (Score:3, Funny)
Ha ha!
</VOICE>
This is exactly why.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I've used XP SP2 without AV for years (Score:3, Insightful)
firefox + nat=no anti virus not needed
You're crazy for using ie7 though.. you can still run activex, its not safe.
monological discussions (Score:5, Funny)
did I mention how
oh wait, this is
If his son is not an Admin on the box, why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
And with UAC, since Administrators don't even run with full token by default, 3rd party applications will quickly move away from assuming Admin access (a huge problem with running XP as limited -- apps blow up).
yay for him.... (Score:3, Informative)
Windows is finally catching up?!!
Re:I've used XP SP2 without AV for years (Score:3, Interesting)
Context (Score:3, Insightful)
No, seriously, (Score:5, Funny)
Uh oh... (Score:5, Funny)
"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
Re:Almost as Arrogant as the Linux Fanboys (Score:4, Informative)
A virus spreads because of applications running on a large population of machines share the same security hole. Bearing in mind the sheer number of different Linux distros there are, running different kernels, desktops and daemon applications, there really are very few applications that are common to a lot of machines that would also be capable of propogating a virus.
Additionally, the tendency for users to run programs at root level on Linux machines is much less than users running programs with administrator priveliges on Windows - this is because the security model on Linux is much simpler, without complexities of things like the registry, such that the only files a normal user can damage (on a properly configured Linux system) are their own ones.
Before I am accused of being a fanboy, the vulnerabilities in Linux (or any UNIX-like OS) are from buffer overflow attacks that cause a running daemon to drop to a (root) shell prompt allowing access to the system. However, these types of attacks are very directed against specific machines because they only work against specific versions of, say, FTP or Telnet on the system. Nowadays, of course, the tendency is to avoid using these daemons on the public internet anyway, instead opting to use secure services like SSH, SFTP & SCP.
I work in OS security and whether you run Windows or UNIX, you can never view any system as being completely secure or invulnerable to viruses. But being aware of what those vulnerabilities are likely to be means that you are more likely to defend against those attacks when they occur.