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Comments: 251 +- IT: Microsoft's Free AV App May Be a Non-Starter on Friday June 12 2009, @08:33AM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Friday June 12 2009, @08:33AM
from the to-morro-tomorrow dept.
from the to-morro-tomorrow dept.
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CWmike writes "Microsoft is preparing to launch a public beta of Morro, the free anti-malware it announced last November, according to reports. Morro will use the same scanning engine as Windows Live OneCare, the software that the free software will replace and Microsoft's first consumer-grade antivirus package. OneCare is to get the boot as of June 30 (along with finance app Microsoft Money). John Pescatore, an analyst at Gartner, has questioned whether users would step up to Morro even if it was free. 'Consumers are hesitant to pay for a Microsoft security product that will remove problems in other Microsoft products,' he said. 'Think of it this way. What if you smelled a rotten egg odor in your water and the water company said, "Sure, we can remove that, but it will cost you $50." Would you buy it?' Not surprisingly, competitors have dismissed Morro's threat to their business. 'We like our chances,' Todd Gebhart, vice president in charge of McAfee's consumer line, said when it was announced OneCare was a goner. 'Consumers have already rejected OneCare,' added Rowan Trollope, senior vice president of consumer software at Symantec. 'Making that same substandard security technology free won't change that equation.'"
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As long as.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:As long as.. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:As long as.. (Score:5, Funny)
Motive: They're trying to seize control of their botnet back from the Chinese.
Parent
Re:As long as.. (Score:5, Interesting)
According to a-v comparatives:
http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/corporate-reviews [av-comparatives.org]
Microsoft's AV software is very good. It has low false-positives and generally scored quite well. If the same capability is free, I don't see a reason not to recommend its use. I certainly don't work for a-v comparatives, but they were around before Microsoft was in AV business, and their top rated software changes pretty freqeuntly. I'd call them reasonably unbiased, but judge for yourself.
Parent
Microsoft's disjointed AntiVirus strategy (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool [microsoft.com]
You gotta read this page. They release a new version every month. It apparently cannot remove viruses which are not actively running. Why is this tool not built in to Microsoft Windows Defender?
Windows Live One Care [microsoft.com]
This link shows a forum moderator, chastising a poor infested user for asking a question about a different Microsoft antivirus product -- Microsoft Windows Defender. Why are these separate products, again?
Microsoft Windows Defender [microsoft.com]
Formerly known as Microsoft AntiSpyware.
These should be one product. The fact that Microsoft maintains three separate products to deal with this problem is, itself, an indication of a very serious ongoing problem at Microsoft. As a company, they still don't take this seriously.
Parent
Re:Microsoft's disjointed AntiVirus strategy (Score:5, Funny)
Whenever I see that name, my mind initially takes it as a Software Removal Tool that is Malicious rather than a tool for removing malicious software.
Parent
Re:Microsoft's disjointed AntiVirus strategy (Score:5, Informative)
The "Malicious Software Removal Tool" is pushed through Windows Update. It's not meant to be a full-blown virus scanner, just an install script that will neuter a few of this month's viruses. It's created for the computer illiterates with no virus scanner in the hopes that they left Automatic Updates on.
Windows Defender was supposed to be a very basic, lightweight application to provide some warning that you're infected It's part of Windows Vista, installable on Windows XP, and has some nifty functions that fall between msconfig and HijackThis. I can't speak to it's detection rate, but our help desk has gotten a few calls from people who didn't realize they were infected until Windows Defender told them so.
Windows Live OneCare was their attempt at competing with Symantec or Network Associates. They bought the basic engine from some other company, saw that the entire thing was written in VB 6, facepalmed, and rewrote it as OneCare. It also helps with remote backups and whatnot.
They really shouldn't be all one product, as they serve completely different purposes. Although if they made Windows Defender a bit more powerful, they'd have an uninstallable version of Live Care.
Parent
Re:As long as.. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, to give Norton some credit, they've been working on their removal procedure and it's now easier to remove.
So (since my boss once said "if you can't say anything good about your competitor, say nothing"), I can now not only say "Norton has a good looking box", I can also say "It's fairly easy to remove it".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's something that puzzles the whole industry. But not to a degree that we care too much about it.
Am I missing something? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not the biggest Microsoft fan out there, but this summary feels a little over the top.
'We like our chances,' Todd Gebhart, vice president in charge of McAfee's consumer line, said when it was announced OneCare was a goner. 'Consumers have already rejected OneCare,' added Rowan Trollope, senior vice president of consumer software at Symantec. 'Making that same substandard security technology free won't change that equation.'"
How can you say that with a straight face? The difference between for-pay and free is huge. And rebranding can make a big difference-- look at the recent success of Bing, for instance.
Personally, I think people are aching for alternatives to the current big players like McAfee. I'm reminded of this [slashdot.org] recent slashdot story-
"'Security firms Symantec and McAfee have both agreed to pay $375,000 to US authorities after they automatically renewed consumers' subscriptions without their consent.' The two companies were reported to the New York Attorney General after people complained that their credit cards were being charged without their consent. The investigators found that information about the auto-renewals was hidden at the bottom of long web pages or buried in the EULA."
I think something that's free and easy to use can compete very well against this sort of customer abuse.
p.s. anyone else find the quotation by John Pescatore completely unintelligible? Either he's very confused with his analogies or was misquoted.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I think people are aching for alternatives to the current big players like McAfee.
I'm aching for alternatives to bloatware like AVG, actually.
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Personally, I think people are aching for alternatives to the current big players like McAfee.
I'm aching for alternatives to bloatware like AVG, actually.
Avira [free-av.com].
This, of course, is for home and personal use.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks, I'm giving it a try. I've been using Vista for a few days and I'm getting nervous (the jokes practically write themselves) and think I should have some AV.
Is it worth getting more spam in my gmail spam folder to do some trialware crap and get the premium version? I already have over 10,000 messages in there, what's another thousand or so?
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Is it worth getting more spam in my gmail spam folder to do some trialware crap and get the premium version? I already have over 10,000 messages in there, what's another thousand or so?
Im using the trial version of the premium suite on my new PC (procrastinating on buying it) and I have only gotten a handful of e-mails, only reminding me to purchase it or that my trial is expiring soon. Not too bad, IMO.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For one, it creates lots of temporary files for every file it scans, trying to extract them like an archive whether they really are or not. That's why it scans so slowly, and will thrash your hard drive even if you're scanning files elsewhere, like over the network.
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And will pop up a reminder every two days to inform you that for only 19.95/year you could be using AntiVira Premium.
I got so fed up with it that I'm probably going to end up paying for NOD32 [eset.com]
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And will pop up a reminder every two days to inform you that for only 19.95/year you could be using AntiVira Premium.
It's non-intrusive though. You click OK, and it goes away. No more for two days. It's preferable to the alternatives that are out there.
I ended up buying a 3 year license for $129.99(US).
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
A huge advert window opens, minimising the fullscreen game that I'm playing to tell me to buy their product.
This must be some use of the word "non-intrusive" which I am not aware of.
Admittedly, I didn't have any problems with it as an anti-virus package, it was much better than bloated "full protection" software packages from Symantec and McAfee but I feel it's cheating somewhat to advertise your product as "free anti-virus" and then use it as a platform to advertise the pay-for versions which just have more features that I don't want.
Parent
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Informative)
Try one of these:
http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-the-Popup-Ads-in-Avira-Antivir [wikihow.com]
http://www.tipsfor.us/2007/08/15/make-avira-antivir-free-edition-more-usable/ [tipsfor.us]
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I second this.
Blows AVG out of the water, and consistently scores high on virus software comparasions. Latest version seems to cause some performance issues on lower spec machines, but still scans like a champ.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
How can you say that with a straight face? The difference between for-pay and free is huge. And rebranding can make a big difference-- look at the recent success of Bing, for instance.
Not going to argue with Bing... but in the business market for-pay and free are not always that huge a difference. It depends on the buyer, and what the "for-pay" gets you. There are plenty of companies that absolutely require some sort of support for a given product. In addition to that, there are minimum requirements that the software must meet just to be considered. By the looks of this move, since Morro is going to use an engine from a product that absolutely flopped and died, then chances are Morro
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Morro (and OneCare) are for unmanaged computers (home users, perhaps small companies). Forefront Client Security is the anti-malware software intended for business use. Both will use the same anti-malware engine, but FCS has all of the manageability and reporting that you would expect in an enterprise.
I don't really see Morro as an attempt to compete in the home anti-virus market (in other words, Morro is not intended to take sales away from any of the other vendors). The real goal is to try to have anti-vi
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
what bothers me most about this article is this line
'Consumers are hesitant to pay for a Microsoft security product that will remove problems in other Microsoft products,'
At this point, most malware doesn't hack Windows, it hacks your brain. It tricks you into executing it. The only vector that is even being used extensively anymore is Office, Acrobat, and Flash, MS has been phasing out older formats and patching up the holes and Adobe is finally waking up and doing something about their security issues. even in those programs, most of the time a Trojan file is involved.
On top of that, the most recent malware doesn't even need administrative privlages. It simply installs in your user account directory and starts up when you login. I see absoletly no reason why this method of execution wouldn't work in any other OS, Be it Linux, OSX, or BSD regardless of security settings.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
'Consumers are hesitant to pay for a Microsoft security product that will remove problems in other Microsoft products,'
Most malware is not something that exploits vulnerabilities inherent in the product, they exploit the easiest vulnerability of all: the user. A lot of what AV programs do is protect stupid users from infecting their own PCs. Really, it doesn't remove any
Latest AV-Comparatives report.. (Score:3, Informative)
As much I would like to bash Microsoft from time to time. latest AV-Comparatives report [av-comparatives.org] has them up there with ESET NOD32. With Microsoft you never know if that included some sums of money, but yeah.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Informative)
And rebranding can make a big difference-- look at the recent success of Bing, for instance.
Bing is, technically, far superior to Live Search. It's not just a re-branding.
(With one exception: people raving about Bing's image search UI obviously never used Live Image Search, which is nearly identical UI-wise. Bing still returns better, more relevant, results though.)
Parent
You gotta love it (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft, the virtual inventor of buggy bananaware and OS monoculture that enables mass distributable malware gets into the A/V market. Sounds like Typhoid Mary selling antibiotics...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you're Microsoft.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
I suppose most Microsoft programmers are fundamentally honest, so they surely don't want to produce bad code. But they do, so they must possess a certain degree of incompetence. Do I trust incompetents to correct their own mistakes? If they could, they wouldn't have made them in the first place.
As for management, they are known to rush software out the door with critical bugs and huge inefficiencies because they don't care about good software, they care about sales, and when you work for a monopoly, product
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Getting a virus when receiving an email with a doc file attachment has nothing to do with suckering people into installing software. There are plenty such examples where computer-savvy owners, who aren't suckers, get malware anyway. This [informationweek.com] would not happen if the OS was not to blame otherwise.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Which is where linux has several inherent advantages over windows....
A trusted package repository - if you can, try to get all your software from the repository, it will be signed by your distro and therefore somewhat trusted, and is much easier to maintain (update) etc... Users are far less likely to be downloading and running random arbitrary binaries.
Files being executable are based on file permissions rather than the name, a malicious file being delivered by a website can easily control the filename, bu
Bad Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
'Think of it this way. What if you smelled a rotten egg odor in your water and the water company said, "Sure, we can remove that, but it will cost you $50." Would you buy it?'
This analogy is just dumb. This is a free product. Obviously the analogy would have the water company saying, "Sure, we can remove that for free."
Not to mention 'Consumers are hesitant to pay for a Microsoft security product that will remove problems in other Microsoft products,' which is a stupid point to make about a free product.
Furthermore, MS's security "problems" are over a billion installs. As we see every year when they tie Linux as the most secure system in pwn2own, they've got nothing to be upset about on the technical side of things.
And finally, "added Rowan Trollope, senior vice president of consumer software at Symantec. 'Making that same substandard security technology free won't change that equation'" is pretty funny from a guy representing a company that actually charges for substandard security technology.
Missing some info from the summary (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm surprised a quote from this [zdnet.com] article didn't make it in:
How many people want all of their traffic explicitly going through Microsoft?
Re:Missing some info from the summary (Score:5, Insightful)
How many people want all of their traffic explicitly going through Microsoft?
On the other hand, it might be an effective way to protect users from the likes of Linux, Firefox, etc...
Parent
Is that Gartner analyst confused or what? (Score:2)
Seriously, his analogy is pretty far off. Let me try: Think of it this way. What if you smelled a rotten egg odor in your water and the water company said, "Sure, we can remove that, and it's a free service." Not that I have a lot of faith in MS's product quality here, but still, saying that users won't sign for a free service because it's a service they don't think they should have to pay for is a pretty stupid comment.
whenever i get a new or used computer (Score:2)
The water analogy (Score:2)
sulfurous water analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
Not based on Onecare. (Score:2)
Supposedly, Morro is based on Forefront Client Security, and onecare has been completely phased out. Considering the poster, I'm surprised that the article didn't say that morro eats babies and killed your dog.
As for Onecare, I had it. It was a great scanner and a firewal. The only reason I got rid of it was because of the onecare circle. in Onecare you had 3 licences. In version 2.5, they developed this Onecare Circle to help you keep track of security on all three copies. and all it would do is scream abo
Car Analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to use a bad car analogy. If I buy a BMW and it breaks down, I take it to the BMW dealer to work on it. Some people obviously opt for third party repair, but a lot trust the manufacturer, even though it is often design problems that caused the breakdown. I understand that people have unreasonable expectations that their purchases don't have vulnerabilities and will last forever, but the other 95% of the population recognizes that complicated systems need repairs and protection.
I don't know if this will be successful, but to think that it should not be trusted or immediately dismissed is ignorant. That being said, I don't use Microsoft products, largely because I don't like AV. Linux FTW!
No thanks (Score:2, Informative)
I always use Antivirus 2009! (Score:3, Funny)
It works on everything I try it on! It works on Windows and Linux and Mac OS X! I just have to go to a web page and it scans my machine and tells me how many viruses I have.
Bad analogy (Score:5, Informative)
'Think of it this way. What if you smelled a rotten egg odor in your water and the water company said, "Sure, we can remove that, but it will cost you $50."
I think that analogy is broken. Very few malware use the holes in MS software these days. Most of the viruses spread by user error, email, IM, flaws in Flash/Acrobat etc. MS is offering a service to clean them up and does provide free fixes for bugs in their software. Obligatory car analogy, car company sells insurance for breakins and accidents and charges extra. Why not pay for it if the deal is good?
better analogy (Score:3, Interesting)
Defects in application or 'user error' shouldn't lead to the OS being compromised or the consumers having to pay the sellers more money to fix their defective product.
Re:better analogy (Score:4, Insightful)
"I think that analogy is broken. Very few malware use the holes in MS software these days. Most of the viruses spread by user error, email, IM, flaws in Flash/Acrobat etc" Defects in application or 'user error' shouldn't lead to the OS being compromised or the consumers having to pay the sellers more money to fix their defective product.
Name a OS where user error can't lead to the OS being compromised. Maybe only in a very locked down system like a kiosk , but a kiosk is not every useful and the user won't have any freedom. If you can install Firefox, you can install a virus. Unless there's a whitelist, but would you trust a whitelist maintained by MS? An alternative is total application virtualization, but given the fact that applications need to talk to each other and be able to access user files make it tough.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Right, there's no way you could have, say, a malicious perl script.
Re: (Score:2)
Trolling a little, eh? Your post is complete nonsense.