Microsoft Admits Disabling Anti-Virus Software For Windows 10 Users (bbc.com) 208
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Microsoft has admitted that it does temporarily disable anti-virus software on Windows PCs, following an competition complaint to the European Commission by a security company. In early June, Kaspersky Lab filed the complaint against Microsoft. The security company claims the software giant is abusing its market dominance by steering users to its own anti-virus software. Microsoft says it implemented defenses to keep Windows 10 users secure. In an extensive blog post that does not directly address Kaspersky or its claims, Microsoft says it bundles the Windows Defender Antivirus with Windows 10 to ensure that every single device is protected from viruses and malware. To combat the 300,000 new malware samples being created and spread every day, Microsoft says that it works together with external anti-virus partners. The technology giant estimates that about 95% of Windows 10 PCs were using anti-virus software that was already compatible with the latest Windows 10 Creators Update. For the applications that were not compatible, Microsoft built a feature that lets users update their PCs and then reinstall a new version of the anti-virus software. "To do this, we first temporarily disabled some parts of the AV software when the update began. We did this work in partnership with the AV partner to specify which versions of their software are compatible and where to direct customers after updating," writes Rob Lefferts, a partner director of the Windows and Devices group in enterprise and security at Microsoft.
300 000 every day? (Score:2)
samples? as in.. the same stuff again?
no wonder stuff keeps getting slower. imagine that every one of those takes only 4 bytes. that's 438 megabytes per year.
or is that 300 000 new builds of software from sw developers... any software.
Re: 300 000 every day? (Score:3, Insightful)
Breaking down yearly stats it looks like 1 million per day are actually created.
But AV only finds about 300,000 a day. And that's all of them collectively.
Not only is AV useless but also damaging as it creates never ending bloat in AV products.
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So your immune system is useless because it doesn't detect all diseases? And it causes all these problems from allergies to other autoimmune diseases right up to transplant rejections. Get rid of it and tell us how much better off you're now.
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So your immune system is useless because it doesn't detect all diseases?
The thing about trying to pull off the lawyer strategy, is that you need to know what the answer will be before you ask the question.
We could get into the much bigger flaw of your entire line of reasoning by observing that a virus scanner cannot equate to your immune system. Your immune system is composed of both offensive and defensive capabilities, proactive and reactive, layer upon layer. Your skin is part of your immune system. The closest software analogy to this is the Operating System, certainly n
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Well, then do the second part of my statement: Get rid of it and tell us how much better off you're now.
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It's called a clean room class 1 according to ISO 14644-1.
Move in there.
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We could get into the much bigger flaw of your entire line of reasoning by observing that a virus scanner cannot equate to your immune system. Your immune system is composed of both offensive and defensive capabilities, proactive and reactive, layer upon layer. Your skin is part of your immune system. The closest software analogy to this is the Operating System, certainly not the lowly Virus Scanner.
Yes, your entire body is built to resist invaders just like the entire Operating System should be built to resist invaders but that's generally not what people are talking about when they say immune system. A good analogy for a virus scanner might be your white blood cells. As the OP said, get rid of your white blood cells and see how well you fare. They do cause problems in some people and are not 100% effective but generally not having them is a lot worse for most people.
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A better example of an analogy for a virus scanner would be a thick woolen blanket, that you drape over yourself when you are at the beach, to protect against solar radiation that would give you skin cancer.
I mean, really. That's what we have more megahertz and RAM for, isn't it? For better and more powerful Antivirus agents.
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My immune system detects pretty much all diseases caused by intrusive bacteria and viruses, etc. This includes bacteria that it hasn't been exposed to yet. Its reaction to such is slower than I'd like, and in some cases that can be fatal, but it has a much better recognition rate than anti-virus software.
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It does? For real? Without first having to learn about them, you were born with a perfect immune system?
Mind if I draw a few pints of your blood? I have a hunch that it would sell for a few millions.
step change (Score:2)
And these would all be variations on bacteria that have been promiscuously circulating genes for billions of years, on a continuous basis, with perhaps a few truly novel mutations scattered here and there.
Just wait for the zero-day bacteria evolved in electrical quarantine on a giant, distributed Beowulf cluster of Volta GPUs, then released into wetware by some bio3d printer hacked by North Korea via some rogue Windows XP box long lost between the dr
Re: 300 000 every day? (Score:2)
Most of them are mutations of known malware, so it makes sense to try to classify them into different families of malware.
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Your argument is a version of a logical false dichotomy that is called a "Perfect Solution Fallacy [wordpress.com]".
Chromebooks come the closest, being far ahead of Windows or Mac PCs. Of course, there are tradeoffs and limitations that may not be acceptable to some.
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You missed the point as it flew over your head at 30,000 feet. Other OS's, including ChromeOS, don't have measurably fewer bugs. They are just less targeted and there are currently fewer exploits. Changes in market dominance will flip that number very quickly.
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Well, you've seemingly forgotten that ChromeOS sucks, because there are very few additional programs you can run on it. Almost no third-party choices to be made. Just eat the gruel Google provides. Certainly, nobody is allowed to casually create their own programs to run on ChromeOS.
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McAfee? (Score:5, Funny)
So, apparently Microsoft is the only one who has actually figured out how to disable McAfee. They should patent that.
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It is NOT Micro$haft's computer, they should NEVER be disabling any user installed software at all!
Wrong. It's their OS, and they can design it to do whatever the hell they want, including disabling any software users install. By installing their OS on your computer, you are giving them permission to operate your computer in the way that *they* deem best (hence the term "operating system").
If you don't like the way their OS works, then you should find another vendor instead of bellyaching about it.
Micro$h
False economy. (Score:2)
Just how necessary is a anti-virus of any description? If Windows could make their OS as hardened as OSX or just about any flavor of Linux none of these anti-virus companies would survive anyways. What are they going to moan about then? "Your product is too secure, we are losing business?!"
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>> Adding antivirus gives malware writers an even larger surface to attack.
Yep, exactly. And even sometimes, it's straight backdoors that are added, as is the case in SSL interception by AV Software.
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>> If Windows could make their OS as hardened as OSX
It's called Windows 10 S, and Slashdotters excoriated them for releasing it as a crippled piece of software.
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Those were all patched days after release. Try again.
Well duh (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course you run one AV software at a time and you disable the other one. That is PC use 101. What's the problem?
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Alternate Title: MS Disables Faulty AV Software (Score:5, Insightful)
Or for a non-inflammatory title: Microsoft Disables Faulty AV Software so Win10 Uses Can Safely Update To Latest OS
AV software is some of the worst crap to get foisted on Windows installations. I wish MS would just disallow it outright. But as the Kaspersky suit shows, AV vendors aren't going to let go of that teet if they find any way to avoid being forced to do so.
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Yup.
I work for a global organization with over 200k employees scattered in various countries. While each location has it's own company name, company culture and business segment, one thing is universally enforced by our mother company.
Fucking McAfee. It's even version 8.8 if you can believe that.
Every single morning when I get to work that stupid POS AV scanner insists to make a complete scan of my PC and is set to high priority.
So, for 30 minutes each day it is impossible to actually use my computer.
In our
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I download plenty of shady things from shady sources and I have never gotten a virus. Plus.. my pc's are usable.
I will happily lend you my sister if you really want to test your AV solution.
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I download plenty of shady things from shady sources and I have never gotten a virus.
Gee, I can't imagine why your IT department resorts to such heavy-handed AV protection...
As a sysadmin, I hate having to run AV software on our clients. It's a resource hog, so we receive complaints about responsiveness - and that's just the on-access scanning, the full scans are even worse. Even when we schedule scans out-of-hours, there's always someone who has let their laptop battery drain or switched their workstation off at the socket, so they get smacked with a full scan the next morning. Then there'
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Why is it that AV software never does anything useful to actual block viruses? Disable Internet Explorer and install Chrome/Firefox with uBlock and conservative security settings, for example. Stop old, known vulnerable versions of apps from opening and provide the user with instructions to update them. Generate some random phising emails, and when the user falls for them publicly shame them via the company wide mailing list. They could make a game of it, start at Nigerian Price level and see if you can get
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Every single morning when I get to work that stupid POS AV scanner insists to make a complete scan of my PC and is set to high priority.
It's too bad that your IT department is too incompetent to use reasonable settings for your antivirus, but the fact is that those are just settings, and it's not McAfee's fault that you get a free system scan with every reboot. That is the fault of your IT department.
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Holy shit. You're just figuring this out? Let me guess...you're 20? How did you get such a low userid? I ask, because McAfee has been fucking terrible for a decade at least. (Not as bad as Norton, but that's a low fucking bar.) Seriously. Go back a decade and look through /., and I bet you can find AV horror stories just like yours. Hell, some might even have my name on them.
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Yes, I did wonder whether any of this was related to the problems with Anniversary Update and Avast antivirus. For those unaware, this saw a large portion of Win10 64-bit PCs running Avast go into a BSOD reboot-loop during the installation of the Anniversary Update.
There was an Avast update that fixed the issue within around 48 hours, but it was still a fairly major headache in the interim. It's not entirely unreasonable of MS to have acted to prevent a repeat of this.
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AV vendors aren't going to let go of that teet if they find any way to avoid being forced to do so.
That's a nice computer you have there it would be a shame if something happened to it
Misleading Title (Score:5, Informative)
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Even more accurate: Microsoft chose what should or should not be running regardless of what you had intended.
Again, if you participate in the Microsoft ecosystem, you abdicate all control but keep all liability. Seems like something I would be excited to not only participate in, but pay for the "privilege" of doing so.
I am unsure how this situation is maintained. It is more than just market forces.
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I would have issue with MS uninstalling any 3rd party software I installed on my machine.
Yeah? And what would you do about it? File a complaint?
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This.
I remember when Windows 10 Anniversary hit, our tech office was flooded with customers that had screwed up start menus and windows apps. in some cases Explorer would not even boot and would crash in an endless loop. The only thing they all had in common: an older copy of Kaspersky. The latest version wasn't even fully compatible.with anniversary and would still cause issues until they updated it about a month later. As far as I could tell, no other AV vendor had similar issues with Windows 10 and my re
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Leaving this type of decision to an IT professional would be fine, but a regular end-user would not even understand the question. Allowing incompatible AV to keep running might lead to pretty severe stability issues on an OS level, disabling it is a decision the OS vendor doesn't really have any choice but to make on behalf of the user. As long as they inform the user and direct them to information on how to obtain an update when it becomes available, it's about as well as it could be handled IMO.
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Disabling software, or even removing it, without asking is the morally wrong approach.
Ironic, since that's exactly what AV software does.
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Of course they shut it off (Score:2)
Microsoft's own apps wouldn't run without getting flagged
Anti-Microsoft Conspiracy Theorists read this (Score:5, Informative)
In order to understand why Microsoft may have logically chosen to do that for their CUSTOMERS, you would have to understand drivers. All pro-active virus scanning software sits in the driver stack. They intercept operating system calls to try to determine whether you're about to run i_h4x0r3d_j00.exe and prevent that from happening. Microsoft drivers also happen to sit in the same driver stack along with everyone else's. They all sit at a particular "altitude" in that driver stack. Some versions of software that are signed drivers that sit in this stack interfere with other drivers in that stack. Microsoft most likely proactively decided that instead of being like "I can't update X because of your crappy third party software that doesn't work right" to temporarily disable it, so they could apply the updates and then re-enable it or their product afterwards.
Now I realize that doesn't make for as sensational news story as something that implies Microsoft purposefully disabling other competitors software but it's more likely that something like what I said is the case. I hate to disappoint you. Cheers!
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If Microsoft thought that introducing incompatibilities was an ideal situation for the consumer (not being sarcastic here), I am unsure how that translates into the liberty of controlling what software someone chooses to run.
The only reasonable choice would be to introduce the incompatibility and let the user decide if they want to deal with the Blue Screen.
Ultimately, this is not about improvements, incompatibilities, features, etc. This is a shot across the bow concerning Microsoft determining what you ca
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"I can't update X because of your crappy third party software that doesn't work right" to temporarily disable it, so they could apply the updates and then re-enable it or their product afterwards.
Um, no. That 3rd party software worked perfectly fine with a previous version of Windows. It isn't compatible with newer version. Also one complaint with Kapersky Labs is that it didn't disable and re-enable. It uninstalled it then installed Windows Defender. [zdnet.com] "One of the key complaints is that Windows 10 uninstalls Kaspersky antivirus without the consent of users and enables the built-in Windows Defender."
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Re:They did a hell of a lot more than just disable (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a fifteen year old refrigerator that still works, as well as a twenty year old oven, a nine year old smart phone, an eleven year old TV, lamps that are more than thirty years old, a lawnmower that is going on twenty years old, and lots of other "shit" that is fifteen years or older that still works. Why should anyone discard functional things just because of Microsoft's say so?
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Surely even anyone here who is incapable of switching out a plug is at least capable of using an adapter?
Re: They did a hell of a lot more than just disabl (Score:2)
I'd like to see the result of a 110V fridge being plugged into a 230V socket. In reality it'd probably be a lot less impressive than I imagined.
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As I look at my fridge compressor, oh, look, 85V-247V, 50-60Hz. That covers from Brazil to every EU country.
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Surely even anyone here who is incapable of switching out a plug is at least capable of using an adapter?
*facepalm*
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I certainly wouldn't expect to use my fridge between US and Europe
Actually you'll find with a lot of modern stuff it is dual voltage. You may have to flip a switch but it'll work. Most laptop chargers, USB chargers etc don't even need that, "they just work" whether you plug them into 110V or 240V or anywhere inbetween. That's the joy of modern switch mode power supplies over legacy linear ones.
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No, but if I take my fridge and move to new home in town, there should be no expectation that I can't still use it if it's perfectly functional. The home builder certainly wouldn't design the home to force me to change it.
The home builder absolutely could do that, if he wanted to. What are you going to do about it? It's simple: if you don't like it, don't buy the house.
Incidentally, there actually are some (fancy) houses like this: they have Subzero refrigerators built-in, and you can't just stick a stand
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Most voltage converters are not meant for large loads, including hair dryers, and will tell you so quite clearly. Refrigerators are very high-power loads and in a US house normally have their own, separate 20A (120V) circuit, which is 2400W maximum.
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No, it's not like the silly police analogy, because MS is not a government agency. You chose MS to be your OS provider, so it's your own dumb fault if you don't like the way they're managing your computer. They have every right to refuse to run whatever 3rd-party software they want with their OS. If you don't like it, then don't use their OS.
Re: They did a hell of a lot more than just disabl (Score:2)
Because computers progress more than fireplaces?
Re:They did a hell of a lot more than just disable (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a fifteen year old refrigerator that still works, as well as a twenty year old oven, a nine year old smart phone, an eleven year old TV, lamps that are more than thirty years old, a lawnmower that is going on twenty years old, and lots of other "shit" that is fifteen years or older that still works. Why should anyone discard functional things just because of Microsoft's say so?
Why are you comparing a stationary appliance without external interface to a computer program? If that's your comparison then it's worth pointing out that Windows XP still works. It didn't magically vapourise with the release of Windows Vista, 7, 8, or 10.
Now if on the other hand you have a security issue with the fact that your Windows XP machine is network based, or you have a major obsolescence issue that could take out the machine at any time, can you really say it still "just works"? If the camera on your 9 year old smartphone breaks does it still just work? What if that camera was actually "mission critical"? Do you wait until the day that it breaks to find out if you have an alternative?
Microsoft hasn't told anyone to discard anything. That is left up to people themselves. Speaking of I *had* a 15 year old fridge. I threw it away fully working for a new one that has more space and uses less than 1/4 of the electricity. Just because something still works is in itself not a reason to keep it.
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Old one? Piece of shit F&P. I have a power logger in my house. The new Samsung is about 33% larger in freezer space, and uses 1/4 of the electricity which can roughly be broken down into 2/3rds of the power when running, half the duty cycle due to far better insulation and seals, and a tiny fraction of the power consumption during de-icing thanks to it not having a heating element in the cooling compartment.
But you don't need to take my word for it. The Energy Star [energystar.gov] website has crunched the data of the
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Times change, technology advances. And some times a manufacturer has to cut off older technology.
What we did was keep a few computers non-updated so that critical software that wouldn't work on newer OS could be run on them.
Its not always possible to have new software written. Some times the company is out of business, Some times they just won't.
As an example, I had two machines, a Mac and a Windows machine, that I kept un-updated and isolated because of video codec issues. The Mac was kept on OS9 because they wouldn't support it in anything later, and the Windows updates killed the codec. All of
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Just a side-point here:
When 'Freon' refrigerants were banned, the replacement refrigerants only worked well at higher pressures. End result: more likely to leak into the environment. More expensive equipment needed to work with.
Also: it's not a coincidence that 'Freon' refrigerants tend to be 'banned' shortly after DuPont's patent runs out on the old refrigerant.
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Also: it's not a coincidence that 'Freon' refrigerants tend to be 'banned' shortly after DuPont's patent runs out on the old refrigerant.
WTF? Citation needed. Freon has been around for many, many decades, and was only banned about 20 years ago. Patents don't last anywhere near that long.
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A nine-year-old iPhone bought new and shiny as the latest model would be a 3G, which doesn't care if the 2G networks go away.
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Plus, those physical items were designed to last longer than 6 months, and if they break or fail to perform to expectation, you can usually hire someone other than the manufacturer to fix them.
At least for now. When will the cloud-based lawn mowers show up?
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All those things you mention are being used in pretty much the same way they were on the day you bought them. Except the smart phone, which must be little more than a feature phone by today's standards.
Your Windows XP PC is fine if you are only dealing with threats from 2007. Your anti-virus software from 2007 can probably cope with them, and Microsoft has likely patched the vulnerability anyway. But several years ago support for XP ended, so if you want to expose it to new threats via the internet you shou
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Why should anyone discard functional things just because of Microsoft's say so?
Because their new OS doesn't support your old shit, and because you are implicitly consenting to allow Microsoft to manage your computer by installing their new OS, and part of that management includes deleting old shit that they don't feel like supporting any more.
If you think that old shit is so great, then go write your own OS to run it on.
Basically, it's like you demanding that your oven manufacturer continue to provide spare
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MS certainly does care about compatibility, it's why the x86 version of Windows is still produced. (You can still run 36-year-old programs just by double-clicking them on 32-bit Windows - and, of course, it still runs legacy 16-bit Windows programs too).
Your mistake was doing an in-place upgrade to Windows 10. You should have done a fresh install, then reinstalled your 31 mission critical programs thereafter.
(Disclaimer: I work in a school and have had to get all sorts of legacy stuff working under Windows
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You can still run 36-year-old programs just by double-clicking them on 32-bit Windows - and, of course, it still runs legacy 16-bit Windows programs too
Except that no one sane runs 32-bit Windows anymore (except expressly for compat purposes).
These days it's more likely an arbitrary Windows program runs on Wine than on the newest real thing.
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Upgrading to 10 was a disaster for us since we had to find alternatives for programs we had used for many years.
You kids. Try upgrading from Netware 3.11 to Netware 4.0, only 2 years later. You couldn't even have the versions co-exist on the same LAN at first!
You've used the same programs for "many years" and bitch about having to find a version that actually stays current after all that time?
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>You kids. Try upgrading from Netware 3.11 to Netware 4.0, only 2 years later. You couldn't even have the versions co-exist on the same LAN at first!
You just brought back some bad memories I thought I had buried away. Madge Token Ring ISA bus cards, jumpers for IRQ, IO. I think I'm going to curl up into a fetal position in the corner and cry for a while you insensitive clod!
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XP was great at backwards compatibility./p>
And that is why it was exploited so easily.
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What do you mean by "delete"? I've seen a lot of things happen during system upgrades, but deletion of select programs has never been one of them.
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For the 7 - 10 upgrade, it actively uninstalls programs if it's unsure about compatibility. In my case it was quite a long list including games, text editors, and other software.
It does give you a list of them afterwards though, so I guess that's nice.
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Would be nice if it gave you a list of incompatible apps before it upgraded. "By the way, your account keeping software will have to be uninstalled, and that CAD package you need to open your files..." Of course being Windows 10 it would probably have installed even if you clicked "No, I need that stuff".
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10 actively finds and kills anything that is not Microsoft-related once the update/upgrade starts.
I fail to see the problem here. That other stuff isn't Microsoft's, so why should they preserve it? It could cause problems with the upgrade process.
That's why the process takes so long, Microsoft is scanning and wiping shit from your system without your permission or knowledge.
You gave them permission when you authorized the upgrade to Win10.
This is what happens when you do a poor job of selecting a vendor.
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Re: Can you feel sorry for Microsoft? (Score:5, Interesting)
If our admins had universal "only ever run pre-approved Powershell scripts" and "never run Office Macros" configured on our Windows machines, security incidents would probably drop by 80-90%.
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"only run whitelisted programs from whitelisted directories" (combined with "no office macros") solves nearly 100%.
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The solution is to disable macros in documents from the internet or that aren't in trusted locations, scanning macros, using protected view and a few other trust settings. Finding that perfect balance between security and functionality.
Re: Can you feel sorry for Microsoft? (Score:5, Informative)
In an enterprise you can
Digitally sign the macro
Add the certificate to the trusted publishers
Set the machine to only run trusted content in Office.
I've helped a customer with this in the past.
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You can even make a career out of being the person who digitally signs the macros. Your nephew can run the business that produces the forms needed to request review of macros for approval.
To say nothing of the warm fuzzy feeling of power you get when those mere 'Macro users' come to your office to plead for their macro to be allowed to run on their system.
Also, your sister-in-law runs the business that sells the air-gapped additional computer that 'users' who want to create macros have to use to create the
Re: Can you feel sorry for Microsoft? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it truly unreasonable to ask your macro developers to sign code before they distribute it in your enterprise? You aren't asking them to make a pilgrimage to the oracle, you are asking them to open the document and go to Developer >> Code >> Visual Basic >> Tools >> Digital Signature >> and pick a certificate.
"It's hard" is why enterprises have huge numbers of unsigned Java apps and ActiveX controls that IT has to manually whitelist. Spend the half-hour it takes to learn to do it right and then "It's hard" isn't an excuse anymore.
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If Office macros are a particularly common infection vector, then the fault lies with the developer of Office (Microsoft), not the developer of Windows (Microsoft).
The common theme here is obvious, but what is uncommon is also important. Office macros are powerful by design. That is VBA inside, and while VBA was always easily ridiculed for performance reason and for the fact that its a BASIC, the criticism was never
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I just realized that there are some I should really crank up for my network, so thanks for bringing this up. Looks like I'm going to have to push Office 2016 while I'm at it, we still have a lot of 2013 installations which don't have all the protections 2016 does.
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and 2) Office Macros (which end users stupidly allow)
The blame is only partially on the end user. The blame is really on Microsoft for not properly sandboxing the macros. 99% of macros should only affect the spreadsheet that they are written for and never leave the program. If a macro does need to do something like save to the harddrive then Microsoft should have a really big warning and make them manually enable that functionality but affected stuff outside of the spreadsheet program should be completely disabled by default.
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2) Office Macros (which end users stupidly allow)
Maybe a reason for this is that Office Macros are leveraged throughout the business world to a great degree be it scripts that update documents from other sources, advanced excel calculations, or every fortune 500's personal favourite: integration with 3rd party document management systems (though many have moved to Sharepoint for ... errr worse).
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Simplify :
Windows 10 (S) is bad
Simplify again:
Windows 10 is bad
Simplify one more time:
Windows is bad. - There we are.