joeware - never stop exploring... :)

I saw this article today

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2006/tc20061003_871186.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives

which is about how McAfee and Symantec are pissed that Microsoft is locking down the OS from people hacking it.

Me personally, I don’t mind of they go out of business, I don’t use either of their products; neither one has done anything I would even start to consider amazing in a long long time. I have no trust in either company or their products. My overall experiences with McAfee products are less than stellar, I have been in jobs where I saw a McAfee AV package update blow out a large portion of the Windows servers in a Data Center. I think both companies actually encourage unsafe practices by putting their freebie versions of tools on new PCs and expecting people to subscribe to their services. Don’t believe me, go door to door and ask folks if they have an large manufacturer PC and if they do, if they have ever subscribed to the update services… Very few folks I talk to do. Instead they feel they must still be safe in some way. The first thing I do with my or anyone’s PCs that came from a vendor in my personal life is that I wipe the OS that came from the factory and reinstall Windows from the ground up. Almost immediately the machine is much faster. I enable the firewall and if I am concerned about viruses with the person I install AVG. I feel the machine is safer with AVG than it is with McAfee and Symantec AND the machine is more performant overall.

Basically I think these companies have been making their dollars the last few years protecting uninformed people from themselves and they are not happy that Microsoft is trying to make the OS safer so that this extra protection may not be as required as it was in the past. Also, all of the hack ways they had of trying to offer this protection are becoming worthless because Microsoft is blocking that type of access… Specifically that is the kernel access…

The whining about the kernel access “issue” is the one that really makes me dislike McAfee and Symantec and make me want to scream from the rooftops that the products aren’t worth the box they come in. I don’t care what their argument is, they shouldn’t have access to the kernel. NO ONE should have that access except the OS itself. Period. They shouldn’t have had access before, they shouldn’t have that access now, they certainly shouldn’t have that access in the future. Interestingly, at least to me, they are pissed that they don’t have access and can’t do what they want to do but at the same time they are arguing that they know Microsoft can’t protect it properly and that hackers are going to get into it and since they (the “security” companies) won’t have their software there first, the customers will be at risk… Come again? The security companies can’t get into the kernel but the bad guys can? Are the security companies actually admitting that with their millions or maybe billions of dollars pumping into their company and funding their R&D and programming they aren’t as good as or better than the kid hackers sitting in their basements with no funding? Why would I want these companies protecting my system anyway? Doesn’t make sense if they have admitted the hackers can do something they can’t. I would rather pay the hackers.

Overall the only thing I can think of that these companies truly add value for is to use up CPU cycles on machines that are otherwise almost idle and adds enough slowness to the machines that people feel they should kick out more money in a year or three to buy another machine thereby keeping consumers buying more and faster computers.

I say go Microsoft, continue making the OS as safe as you can – THAT IS YOUR JOB. I hope it becomes so safe that there is nothing a third party could offer in the way of security protection. I know that will never occur because many people are uninformed and the OS can never get away with completely stopping uninformed people from doing uninformed things. That is why those people can buy the third party tools. They can pay to be stopped and know that they specifically paid for that feature.

Do I think that Vista and Longhorn will be perfectly secure? Not at all, but I think they will be more secure than they will be if Symantec and McAfee get anywhere in trying to block MSFT from locking things down properly. If you use products from these companies, contact their support and tell them to shut up and let MSFT secure the product the best they can, then come through and write products that further protect the user or make things easier.

  joe