Avoid Non-Microsoft Antivirus Software

http://robert.ocallahan.org/2017/01/disable-your-antivirus-software-except.html

by bzbarsky • 9 years ago

859 371 9 years ago

robert.ocallahan.org

chime2• 9 years ago

At best, there is negligible evidence that major non-MS AV products give a net improvement in security.

I apologize for present anecdote when data is needed but I manage a Windows network with 100+ users and on a daily basis, Kaspersky catches 5-10 emails from Outlook that have nasty attachments. It prevents my users from opening these innocuous looking but nasty Invoice-Jan-2017.docx files. Without a good AV there is no way to know which Invoice-Jan-2017 has a virus/worm vs. which doesn't. Relying on the Office security feature is not sufficient because actual vendor/customers send macro-enabled files to us regularly.

hueving• 9 years ago

Does Microsoft security essentials not scan an attachment when you download/open it?

beefhash• 9 years ago

Are you the target audience for this blog post, though? As far as I can tell, the post talks about one-user setups.

I'd argue that the starting point in a corporate environment, where you can assume that users can be quite negligent, is fundamentally different from a one-user setup, especially since I agree that you can't "fix" the user in corporate.

You want the e-mails gone, not just a warning about it, but a warning is perfectly fine if you're one person and have an idea what you're doing.

Angostura• 9 years ago

I don't see any caveats in the article about the kind of user that the advice is intended for.

shultays• 9 years ago

Invoice-Jan-2017.docx uh, docx files can hack my PC now?

Is this a bug of MS Word or docx format really has ability to become a virus?

spinsser• 9 years ago

It is a feature [0]. Microsoft office products allow for "macros" which are Visual Basic code embedded within a document or a worksheet that can be used by developers to add extra functionalities to their MS files (e.g. validate all data in a work sheet after a user clicks a specific button in the worksheet).

Just like any programming language, it could be used maliciously, and there is no easy way to distinguish which macro-enabled file is safe and which isn't (without going through the code yourself prior to enabling the functionality)

[0] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Enable-or-disable-m...

technion2• 9 years ago

An extraordinary amount of Cryptolocker outbreaks were due to .docx files containing macros.

Yes, it has a default behaviour of "prompt to execute macros", but it happily shows the advice in the malicious document to "please click yes at this prompt to get a free iPhone", at which point the majority of users click "yes".

Strom• 9 years ago

There are exploits for pretty much every file format in existence. [1] There are also exploits that work by just having the e-mail arrive in your e-mail client without you having to even open the message. In fact the e-mail may not even reach your computer if you use some corporate proxy which has anti-virus installed. Project Zero revealed just recently a Norton/Symantec flaw where just sending the e-mail is enough for code execution. [2]

[1] Almost none of these are zero day though, so if you're up-to-date you'll be fine.

[2] https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com.ee/2016/06/how-to-com...

gjjrfcbugxbhf• 9 years ago

Probably .docx.exe or .docm (or whatever the macro enabled document extension is).

_betty_• 9 years ago

normally docx viruses are simply VBA scripts but sometimes they exploit an active x embed or image rendering bug.

However other times things like browsers do dumb stuff:

docx files and silverlight files are both just zip files with completely different structures meaning they can live together in the same file.

IE used to look at txt files that contained html tags and say hmm maybe i should display that as html

that meant on sites that accepted txt and docx uploads (a lot of recruitment sites etc) you could upload a txt file that simply embed the docx as a silverlight component. When the admin looked at the txt file it would run the code as the currently logged in (admin) user.

detaro• 9 years ago

Do you scan on the endpoints or centralized on the mail server?

roca5• 9 years ago

Email attachments should be scanned by the mail server.

gtirloni4• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_in_depth_(computing)

mynameisvlad2• 9 years ago

Have you actually tired Defender and tested it out against Kaspersky? Nobody is telling you to rely on just Office's security features; Defender is a full fledged AV product built into Windows. I believe it and System Center Endpoint Protection are essentially the same product, and in fact, in Windows 10 Defender just applies SCEP policies instead of installing a new program.

madshiva• 9 years ago

You should setup and remove the virus at the source, from the mail server. End users should never receive these mail. Also this is a bad habit to receive invoice from mail (who do that in that way?? in a word docx?

hannob2• 9 years ago

For managed networks you should configure Application Whitelisting. Users simply shouldn't be able to click on something and execute it.

lorenzhs• 9 years ago

Does anyone on your network have a valid reason to execute Office macros? If not, disable them via group policy. Solves so many problems. See what @SwiftOnSecurity has to say on the topic, they manage thousands of users and it seems to work excellently.

sp3322• 9 years ago

This is the site she runs, with configuration guides. https://decentsecurity.com/

emodendroket14• 9 years ago

Wouldn't it be preferable to catch those on the e-mail server?

owenwil2• 9 years ago

This is my advice to everyone I know that gets a new Windows PC. Windows 10's built-in protection is more than adequate, and catches the majority of bad software - anything more is unnecessary, and many of the AV vendors are predatory.

WhiteSource12• 9 years ago

Which AV vendors are predatory? (Though Kaspersky makes me nervous).

What do you think about ESET?

Neil443• 9 years ago

I have 150 ish machines on eset across a few different clients, obviously my experience with it has been very good over the years in all aspects. Eset don't offer the biggest margins but I stick with them because it doesn't cause support issues and I can count the number of infected eset machines I've had to deal with on one hand.

AntivirusExpert• 9 years ago

I recommend going by test results and by the features that interest you most.

Kaspersky, BTW, has the best scores (See here: https://bestantivirus.reviews/tools/test-results-calculator) but Bitdefender and Avira are also great according to these tests, and Bitdefender is my choice, personally.

lmm8• 9 years ago

McAfee in particular aggressively pushes "free trials" (often getting them bundled into the installers of unrelated software) that will then show scarily-worded warnings encouraging you to buy once the trial has expired.

romanovcode4• 9 years ago

It sucks that you cannot reset your Windows to MS-Vendor settings.

For example if you get some Acer laptop and reset it using windows built-in functionality it'll still reset it with all the bloatware - including AV.

EvilTerran• 9 years ago

This should do it:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10s...

They've had similar tools since at least Windows 7 IIRC, if not XP - you've just always had to download them separately, and they've never been advertised with much enthusiasm. Probably trying to strike a balance between pleasing power-users and keeping the bundled-bloatware ecosystem happy, seeing as MS benefit financially from both.

Kipters• 9 years ago

Microsoft released a tool[0] that does exactly that

[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10s...

owenwil2• 9 years ago

Yes, that was the point of the "Signature Windows" series laptops, which looked promising but didn't seem to actually go anywhere...

microtonal• 9 years ago

Can't you just download a pristine Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft's website and install from that? I've done that on my Dell Precision and it works great.

i_live_there• 9 years ago

Uh, yes you can. Couple weeks ago I reset my Windows 10 MSI laptop to a clean state using nothing but Windows itself. Somewhere in Windows 10 restore options there's an option to format your HD and install only Windows and nothing else. You don't need a DVD nor a USB drive. A click of a button and off you go.

scott_karana• 9 years ago

For instances where it's not worth the time to reformat, I've always liked PC Decrapifier. Hard to forget the name once you've heard it :D

https://www.pcdecrapifier.com/

Dolores12• 9 years ago

What stops majority of bad software for my family is disabling administrator account. They don't care installing patches and antivirus updates anyways.

Zardoz84• 9 years ago

Windows 8/10 with the MS built-in protection or Linux + clamav

Sometimes I used CClenaer and/or Spybot to deal with something really nasty, but the MS stuff really does a good job (Someone checked if the hell is frozen now ?)

WorldMaker5• 9 years ago

My advice is similar these days when someone is buying a new PC, with the additional push that everyone should buy a "Signature Edition" PC [1]. Microsoft requires "Signature Edition" machines to be sold without additional software/bloatware. Friends/relatives can most easily buy such PCs from the Microsoft Store, but also some Best Buys and office stores will sell them if you ask.

[1] https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/categor...

aszantu• 9 years ago

Granny won't believe me :( she feels safer because of some popup that tells her she's safe.

currysausage• 9 years ago

Maybe you could create a scheduled task that opens Windows Defender every 2 hours or so? It also has beautiful green buttons that show her how safe she is, and an orange warning every once in a while when she should do a quick scan. There's also some new security center coming with the next Windows 10 version: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/01/23/intro...

dschuetz• 9 years ago

This is the most authentic argument I have read so far on this subject. People do not care about vendors. People care about how they feel. For everything else going beyond the "You are safe!" popup (try to explain "DLL injection?" to your Granny! Okay, "blocking updates" she might understand) a user needs a far deeper understanding of what goes on under the hood of the OS, or practically any software based on said OS. "Uninstall AV software" does not make people feel safer, now that the narrative of "AV is making the Internet safer" is practically standard.

mynameisvlad2• 9 years ago

A recent Windows 10 Update (I don't remember which) brought in periodic notifications from Windows Defender. They're not big bright green checkmarks, but it's a step in the right direction.

doczoidberg2• 9 years ago

Not only your granny. I also want to remember the android icon which gained thousand of 5 star reviews for 'protecting' the smartphone. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/10/fake-andr...

I don't have an AV on my windows machine since ~8years and no problems so far.

pvdebbe2• 9 years ago

I can sell this solution to your granny for $20 a year :-)

    { while true; do sleep 10m ; zenity --notification --text="System safe" ; done }&

Broken_Hippo• 9 years ago

This is pretty common.

It isn't just the popup, though. "make sure you have anti-virus installed or else!" was the mantra drilled into people's heads 20 years back. This was the environment some folks learned to use the internet with. Perhaps she's seen her fair share of infections as well.

My mother is fairly similar in that regard, though she always blamed by brother and father for the infections. Since dad died and my brother isn't home, she may be easier to talk into change now.

rubbingalcohol• 9 years ago

It's irresponsible to make such a broad claim and back it up with really vague anecdotal evidence. Yes, there are a lot of lousy AV products that are at best a break-even for security, but there are some that don't suck and generally you have to pay for them - what a strange concept.

I'm not going to advocate for any particular vendor as I used to work for an AV company (and currently use a product from a competitor). But I can attest that I've used products that have caught threats that Windows Defender didn't, and many products also include a much more robust and configurable firewall.

It's annoying when someone else's lousy code breaks your own code. This happens to the sites I administer frequently, where we will randomly get blacklisted by some no-name AV product's web security feature. I understand the frustration when you have no control over this. But to conclude that all AV software is bad does not follow from the evidence given.

krylon• 9 years ago

really vague anecdotal evidence

[...]

I can attest that I've used products that have caught threats that Windows Defender didn't

Since you brought it up, the latter statements sounds suspiciously like the very definition of "really vague anecdotal evidence. SCNR

nurettin• 9 years ago

Perhaps it is counter-anecdotal evidence showing the futility of anecdotal evidence as a whole.

jpcosta• 9 years ago

I completely agree with you, I find this "disable antivirus" to be such a bad advice! Yes, it may work for tech savvy or security aware person. If you know what you're doing you're much less likely to get into problems. It won't work for general public though.

And the argument being made that "for example, see bugs in AV products listed in Google's Project Zero. These bugs indicate that not only do these products open many attack vectors" could be made for any piece of software your install.

raesene67• 9 years ago

Actually I don't think they could. A-V products inevitably insist on running with very high privileges on target machines, restricting the OS' ability to mitigate any vulnerabilities.

A-V products also have been shown be research from Google Project Zero to be doing very dangerous things (like running a local web server you can send commands to that are executed on the device).

When you combine high-privileged code with dangerous practices you get a very nasty set of risks that aren't present with most other software.

As there is an alternative that doesn't have similar problems (MS Defender) it seems sensible to recommend it.

Acalyptol• 9 years ago

Might be true for people who know what they're doing. However I've seen a decrease in the number of toolbars installed in my mom's computer since I've installed an antivirus.

e40• 9 years ago

Is she on XP or something without Defender?

KayL• 9 years ago

Most people forget the malware on hacked website. Browsers won't give you a warning. (OK. Chrome will show you a RED screen but not for all) They need not hack into your system. But they collected your login info, credit card. I even want to install one on my MacOS.

MS AV still too slow at the moment. In Windows 10, you could turn on Defender to run both AV at the same time.

tempestn2• 9 years ago

What's more, as third party antivirus software becomes increasingly irrelevant, many of these companies resort to harmful and even actively malicious tactics to stay in business. On the more benign end, you see an increase in 'safe web browsing' and such tools that parse javascript while browsing and somehow attempt to make it.. safer, I guess. My main experience with these things is when they randomly decide to block bits of code on our sites, breaking functionality for no discernible purpose.

Far worse are the lengths that a company like AVG will go to to get and keep their software installed on your computer. Their browser toolbars essentially take all the dirty tricks they've apparently learned dealing with malware to.. build a piece of malware. Honestly whether it's active malice, incompetence, or lack of motivation I don't know, but I do know I've spent hours trying to extract their stuff from people's browsers. (I should say here that I fully expect someone reading this has managed to uninstall an AVG toolbar with no issues. They have multiple different auxiliary tools to their antivirus, and I'm not sure specifically which one(s) caused me trouble personally. It's also likely that they're only a _real_ pain in certain circumstances. But regardless, if you google something like 'how uninstall avg' or 'avg malware' I'm sure you'll find many more examples.)

t0mek• 9 years ago

A friend of mine worked as an on-site contractor for the AVG. He claimed that the "toolbar department" in the company, working on the browser toolbar displaying ads is as big as the "antivirus department", working on the engine (or bigger). It shouldn't be a surprise, since the toolbar is the main revenue source for the company.

TeMPOraL• 9 years ago

I should say here that I fully expect someone reading this has managed to uninstall an AVG toolbar with no issues. They have multiple different auxiliary tools to their antivirus, and I'm not sure specifically which one(s) caused me trouble personally.

I can say this: I never had a problem with uninstalling a browser toolbar, or restoring the default search engine in the browser. What I always have problems with, is getting rid of AV software itself. Oh God, how hard it is sometimes.

Norton AV taking half an hour to uninstall is a known thing; I'm convinced they actually have some Sleep() calls in their code just to piss people off. But just last week I tried to get rid of Comodo AV (+ 2 bullshit pieces of software it installed) on my neighbour's computer. Took a while. The uninstaller didn't work (it reported "an error" and gave up), so ultimately I had to resort to manually deleting stuff until the uninstaller finally unlocked itself and cleaned up the rest.

I've been having similar experiences with all AV software in past few years. They're a menace.

tempestn2• 9 years ago

Ya, IIRC it wasn't specifically the AVG toolbar, but some other thing in integrated into the browser. It refused to uninstall, and then even when I downloaded and ran the super-secret installer from their site, it replaced itself on the next restart. Extremely frustrating.

provirus5• 9 years ago

Given how they often MITM the connection they would be able to do things like reorder Google search results. This would be a huge revenue stream. Can also sell browsing data to advertisers to target specific people.

_23sd• 9 years ago

"Microsoft AV products" aren't exempt from breaking things with poorly implemented features. MSE on Windows 7 makes games (specifically, fresh installs of StarCraft II, CS:GO and Overwatch) unplayable for me due to CPU usage spikes, apparently due to it thinking that various game executables and settings files are suspicious. Exempting the directories from scanning and disabling suspected malware sample submission had no effect, what finally worked was switching to school-provided Sophos Endpoint. Antivirus can get messy and intrusive no matter who does it.

raesene67• 9 years ago

The thing is most anti-malware products cause perf. issues, but it seems to be the 3rd party ones that actually make your security worse with poorly implemented and secured features. It seems bizarre to me that commercial paid for security products have such poor coding practices that a lone (albeit very talented) researcher can find so many dangerous security vulnerabilities in them.

These vendors should be leading the way in secure coding and design due to the high-privilege level their code runs at.

aarongolliver2• 9 years ago

Defender has the nasty habit of aggressively scanning new games I download off Steam. There are two occasions where it'll do it:

- While it's downloading it seems to scan each chunk. I have a gigabit connection, with defender off I can download at nearly full speed. With it on I can download at about 1MB/s.

- While the game loads a level. For example, the intro level to the new Deus Ex took over 10 minutes to load the first time. At that point I disabled defender entirely and just promised myself I would be careful. Naive, I know, but at least I can play my video games.

Already__Taken• 9 years ago

You can give it paths to exempt you know. https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/5924-windows-defender-ex...

aarongolliver2• 9 years ago

Yeah, but if you piss me off enough times I'm exempting all of my hard drives. It hasn't caught a single virus since 2009. I've not found it that hard to stay safe online.

Tepix• 9 years ago

I wonder, have there been cases where viruses or trojans were spread via Steam?

leni536• 9 years ago

I have the impression that the AV business is some kind of mixture of scam and mafia.

pjmlp7• 9 years ago

Users are to blame by pirating software. Of course, pirates don't do it for free.

divanvisagie3• 9 years ago

How does piracy come into this?

knotty66• 9 years ago

Don't they? Pirates have been around since long before viruses really became a problem. What was their motivation then?

tracker1• 9 years ago

There are lots of attack vectors, not just pirated software, and viable ones depending on desired outcome can range from email, browser, and direct software spread (pirate games). MacOS isn't safe, and neither is Linux though the attack vectors will vary.

If all you want is a DDoS, a fake advertising account can often deliver the desired effect without actually infecting anyone. It really depends on what the cost/benefit vs desired outcome is. Not everything requires root, and very few people actually check checksums for things they download.

antihero• 9 years ago

Yes they do, the cracking scene ethos is all about technical one-upmanship and the thrill and glory of beating copy protection. Or at least it used to be. The really smart ones do it for their own enjoyment or ideological reasons.

mherrmann3• 9 years ago

As someone who develops a (PyQt-based) desktop app [1], I can confirm this: My app has so far falsely been put into quarantine by Avira and McAffee. It's a pain...

[1] https://fman.io

galfarragem2• 9 years ago

Your app looks promising! It seems heavily inspired on Sublime and that's a very good sign. Is it available already?

mherrmann3• 9 years ago

Yes - click the big "Request early access" button on the home page.

pacifika• 9 years ago

Could you blog / expand on the packaging story for your product please?

mherrmann3• 9 years ago

If we're only talking about packaging, I recommend you search for "PyInstaller" on the blog [1]. For auto updates, search "Sparkle"/"Omaha".

1: https://fman.io/blog

zamalek4• 9 years ago

As always, it depends on the product that you are referring to. Purely by coincidence, I installed [product] again a few weeks ago, after having used Defender since Windows 10 launched.

see bugs in AV products listed in Google's Project Zero

All software has vulnerabilities, including Defender. Searching for [product] in Project Zero shows that only 3 vulnerabilities have been discovered (which is arguably a bad thing, but not according to this author) and it took, at most, 4 days for them to be resolved.

if they make your product incredibly slow and bloated

This is precisely the reason that I have returned to [product]: performance. I'm running off an HDD and Defender saturates my HDD for a good 2 minutes after boot. I don't experience this with [product]. In addition, it has a "gaming mode" which allows you to further cut back on its activity (I have never needed it). Looking at objective tests, Defender fares quite poorly in both performance[1] and protection[2].

Additionally, a homogeneous market is an easy market to exploit. Let's assume that everyone took this advice and installed Defender. It is guaranteed that Defender has vulnerabilities. If you wanted to pwn as many machines as possible, you would only have to worry about exploiting a single AV.

This is just bad advice, I'm sticking with the competition (which may not always be [product]). There are bad players (McAfee, Norton) but that does not mean everyone sans Microsoft is utterly incompetent.

[1] http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/av... [2]: https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/windows-10...

rubber_duck• 9 years ago

I'm running off an HDD and Defender saturates my HDD for a good 2 minutes after boot.

Yea, that's why I disable all AV - every install or clean build or untar or w/e brings the PC to a crawl. Haven't had problems yet.

masklinn• 9 years ago

All software has vulnerabilities

Most software doesn't run in ring0. And most software doesn't actively break exploit mitigation techniques in other software either.

roca5• 9 years ago

All software has vulnerabilities but not all software has the egregious blunders that Travis Ormandy finds --- so many, in such a short period of time.

Furthermore, most software provides value that offsets security risks. Since the entire value of AV products is to improve security, when they fail to do that, they're worse than useless.

The homogeneous market argument is weak. If a determined attacker wants to compromise as many machines as possible with a single attack, they'll come up with an exploit that passes all AV products.

yAnonymous4• 9 years ago

Avira won the speed test? It reliably made every PC I installed it on 2-3 times slower and adds a few minutes to the boot time compared to MSE or whatever it is now called.

barrkel• 9 years ago

The real-time scanning mode of Windows Defender completely destroyed the performance of Cygwin Setup when accessing a mirror stored on my NAS, to take one example. I'm not talking about a few minutes extra; it issued loads of network requests for every signature verification Setup tried to do, the process was still non-responsive after several hours. Turned off realtime scanning, and it immediately finished.

Realtime monitoring has the biggest risk of performance degradation.

drzaiusapelord2• 9 years ago

This is just bad advice, I'm sticking with the competition (which may not always be [product]).

This is my thinking as well. Microsoft's virus definitions are often worst in class and the agent itself only seems to update its definitions daily or, at most, twice day while 3rd party applications do so hourly or more. I've never seen MSE or Defender stop any ransomware attack. Not once. It just can't move fast enough to keep up.

Avast, Sophos, ESET, Panda, etc all trounce MS. Most of these are free for home and are largely trouble-free. Just because the author had a bad experience with Norton and McAfee doesn't mean the MS product is superior. I suspect the person who wrote this isn't a sysadmin who manages many users. The level at which MS can't keep up is embarrassing. I'm surprised to see this kind of thing at the top of HN.

My only compliment for MS is that SmartScreen is very aggressive in Win10 and will often flag suspicious executables correctly. I suspect the author is confusing SS with Defender. SS works because its heuristics based. Defender sucks because its signature based. The nice part is that these are two seperate applications, so if you run Avast or ESET, you still get SS.

Its also worth mentioning that a lot of Win10 "privacy" guides, often linked on HN, recommend disabling SS. I can't stress how much of a questionable practice that is. SS is a proper security layer and if sending MS a hash of an executable is such a problem for you, I suggest getting off Windows, as Windows does so much worse in regards to privacy even after following those guides.

zamalek4• 9 years ago

often flag suspicious executables correctly

The false-negative rate is embarrassing, though - especially with reputable open-source projects. Still, unblocking the file potentially gives a user more time to think about what they are doing.

recommend disabling SS

The last one I saw left UAC turned off. Defender might not be the best (in addition to Windows 10 spying), but Microsoft really does have the best defaults otherwise.

EJTH• 9 years ago

I really haven't had any real use for AV software after i disabled flash on all my browsers...

elorant• 9 years ago

I was running a crawler the other day on one of my PCs from a console app. Then suddenly the antivirus discovers that a page is infected, terminates the connection and wrecks havoc to the app which stays hung there for hours and I'm unable to terminate or even kill it from Task Manager. I had to restart the PC for the task to be forcefully killed. Thanks but no thanks. I uninstalled the damn thing the next day. How the fuck did antivirus software became too intrusive?

smarx007• 9 years ago

What's the difference between your crawler and the botnet client as far as the AV concerned? You're the outlier among the AV customer segment.

bad_user9• 9 years ago

I also want to raise an alarm about a current AV practice, not mentioned in the article:

    AV products like Bitdefender will MITM
    your HTTPS connections by installing their
    own root certificates, by default and 
    without warnings

In the name of "security", this undermines the very purpose of what HTTPS is about, knowingly endangering their users.

And consider that I, a highly technical and security conscious software developer, only noticed it because I saw green icons appearing in my search results and then noticed that Google's SSL certificate is now a fake. And I only noticed it because I know how this shit works and those green icons seemed suspicious.

And yes, I'm using the word "fake", because I doubt that companies like Bitdefender have to pass the same certifications as a certificate authority or that they have any deals whatsoever with Google. And it's a serious vulnerability, because their certificate can get stolen and used by malicious software, not to mention you now have to trust a third-party with all of your secure connections, which includes your Google searches exposing your most secret desires, your Facebook and Slack chats, your bank account, everything. A third-party that does not have the scrutiny of your open-source web browser.

That's just preposterous and these products only survive because users are gullible and technically illiterate.

disiplus3• 9 years ago

i dont think you understand how this works. they install a root certicicate on your machine and do mitm "attack" so they can scan the urls, and block some attacks (i remember when some forum had embeded a pdf, that had some attack and antivirus blocked it )

also you have installed an application that has a root acces to the pc, if it was mallicius it could do allot more damage. it is ultimately a question of trust.

i created and installed my own root certificate because i dont want clicking on the exception if i open a new incognito window, its especialy anoying for websocket connections.

bad_user9• 9 years ago

I don't think you understand how HTTPS works.

so they can scan the urls, and block some attacks

The purpose of HTTPS is to provide a guarantee that your connection to Google is direct, with no intermediaries, such that (1) only Google knows your search query and (2) you get a guarantee that the received content is from Google.

And you get this guarantee from certificate authorities that have a good reputation and that are in business because they've proven they can keep their shit secure. And when one of them violates that trust, the OS / browser vendors can start to invalidate their certificates. AV companies are bypassing it all.

The blocking of attacks reasoning is kind of bullshit, because Google's Safe Browsing service and browser extensions maintained by a community like uBlock Origin are doing a better job of warning against potentially malicious websites. There are always vulnerabilities to exploit of course, though it's getting harder for those to pop up due to the modern sandboxing of browsers.

However I have yet to see evidence that AV software is doing a better job of catching those, because it's a whack-a-mole game and it's more likely that browser vendors find and fix those vulnerabilities faster than AV companies, because bugs get reported to browser vendors first. And sure, if you have Adobe Reader or Oracle Java installed as plugins in your browser, that's a huge risk, but it's actually easier to uninstall those and browsers have started disallowing plugins. Safari for example is disabling everything by default.

The problem with installing their own root certificate is precisely one of trust. Yes, you allow a piece of software to run with root permissions, for as long as you don't see it do stupid shit, like installing a root certificate, at which point all of that trust should be gone.

And that is because a custom root certificate that doesn't belong to a competent certificate authority cannot be trusted and will increase the attack surface. This is security 101.

zrm3• 9 years ago

That is a bad idea.

If you MITM the connection locally it triples the computational cost for both encryption and handshake operations. Then more websites don't use TLS because it's three times as slow for the user.

It also prevents you from using a good cipher suite when the MITM doesn't support it even though the browser and the server both do, again reducing security or performance or both. And it's very easy to screw this up the other way and have the browser show a good secure connection with strong primitives and forward secrecy while the MITM is actually communicating with the server using export ciphers or RC4.

The existence of a trusted root private key on your machine exposes you to KCI of all servers. And key compromise is not even necessary if they use the same root private key for everyone, which has actually happened.

This is not a comprehensive list of the reasons why that is a bad idea.

fbis251• 9 years ago

Don't forget that if their software is changing the certificates for every HTTPS site you visit they're probably doing it on the fly. This means that the private key is on your computer. Assuming they generate a per install private key that won't be a big issue but if it's the same private key for all their installs it could get pretty bad once someone gets the key

billpg2• 9 years ago

Don't most browsers have hooks for AV (and other plugins) to get into web traffic without having to mess with TLS?

bad_user9• 9 years ago

No, I don't think so and if it does, please tell me which browser does it so I can keep away from it, because that defeats the purpose of TLS.

Either way, Bitdefender installs their own root certificate and generates their own for google.com. I've got proof if you want.

yAnonymous4• 9 years ago

Microsoft doesn't exactly have a great record with root certificates either.

Emergency Windows update revokes dozens of bogus Google, Yahoo SSL certificates

https://arstechnica.com/security/2014/07/emergency-windows-u...

They revoked certs like this silently in the past which makes it even worse.

josteink• 9 years ago

Got an example? I haven't heard anything about this and I'm genuinely curious.

bad_user9• 9 years ago

Any references, because I don't know what you're talking about?

I'm not a Windows user, haven't been a Windows user since 2001, my AV experience has been with the PCs of my family, whom I'm trying to keep safe.

But even if I were a Windows user, if you can't trust Microsoft, you can't trust their OS, at which point it would be better to use something else because security really depends on how trustworthy that OS and its vendor are. I do trust Microsoft more than I trust an AV vendor though.

kbart5• 9 years ago

You can manage pre-installed root certificates manually in Windows. As far as I've seen, there was nothing sinister in default Windows root CA list.

akjainaj3• 9 years ago

In the name of "security", this undermines the very purpose of what HTTPS is about, knowingly endangering their users.

It doesn't have to be insecure. If the software that does the MITM checks the certificates correctly, I don't see how it would be worse than letting the browser handle it.

Not that I'd ever use an antivirus, of course.

raesene67• 9 years ago

It actually is worse. The problem comes "what does the interception do when it encounters an invalid certificate"?

So for example a self-signed cert. does it

a) create a "valid" cert itself, hiding the error from the user? This is obviously dangerous

b) create an "invalid" self-signed cert. This is messy as a user will then see a self-signed cert from the A-V vendor, which they may be more or less inclined to trust

c) Pass the traffic through without inspection, missing any potential threats

And that's just one case. SSL/TLS interception is very hard to get right and easy to make the user's security worse as a result.

noemotion• 9 years ago

I am not disagreeing with you, but I want to point out that, usually, the certificate is generated locally during setup and then installed in the trusted certificates store. So no one else should have that certificate. I also assume there is an option somewhere to disable the MITM scanner.

bad_user9• 9 years ago

I also assume there is an option somewhere to disable the MITM scanner.

By default this is ON and users don't have the competence to recognize that this is in fact increasing the surface area for attacks and to disable it. The mere existence of a setting that is ON by default doesn't absolve such AV companies.

But speaking of Bitdefender in particular, I installed it on my wife's computer, disabled that option, confirmed that it survived a restart, then one month later I discovered that it is ON again, probably due to an automatic update. It's also an "admin" setting and my wife's user account does not have admin privileges to turn it on or off.

So even with a setting in place, it's untrustworthy.

hrez3• 9 years ago

Bitdefender free version doesn't have ssl MITM feature. Neither it installs root cert as far as I can see.

tomaskafka• 9 years ago

Yes. Also, let's finally start a public discussion about AV companies making money by selling data (they do, either all of them or most).

Of course that being able to peek into https traffic gets them more data (specific urls, not just whole sites).

bjd2385• 9 years ago

_Everyone_ is collecting our data nowadays. Who's left to sell it to?

provirus5• 9 years ago

Some of what is was their EULA (which is subject to change), and what they collected (which is subject to change with updates):

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2492599,00.asp

https://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/a...

hannob2• 9 years ago

I've written and talked about this a couple of times. Each and every one of these products does some kind of TLS security degredation:

* https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/869-How-Kaspersky-makes-you-...

* https://media.ccc.de/v/camp2015-6833-tls_interception_consid...

xuhu• 9 years ago

Browsers grudgingly support local MITM as an ugly half-ass solution, mostly because banks require it as part of their data loss prevention measures. Since there is no OS-provided API, there is no alternative that makes corporate clients happy.

Depending on the AV vendor, the MITM implementation will "give AV access to your SSL traffic" or "allow everyone to intercept it" (Symantec).

Neil443• 9 years ago

If the alternative is not scanning ssl traffic for malware then perhaps if it's done correctly then it's not a bad compromise. For example a broken upstream cert should just be treated the same as if malware was detected. I bet good AV would update revocation lists more often than the OS & browser does too.

w8rbt• 9 years ago

Many corporations do this on their networks so that they can inspect traffic for security purposes and outbound loss prevention. It's not uncommon today and seems to be gaining in popularity.

Edit: I don't mean to imply that it's the right or the wrong thing to do (it probably depends on the situation). Just stating what I have seen in industry.

Terretta• 9 years ago

That communication belongs to the company, the session is work product on a company owned device. Feels squeamish if you didn't think about it that way, but is implied by almost every employment agreement.

This is quite different than the AV vendor who does not own your communication from your own device.

unethical_ban• 9 years ago

As someone who's worked on corporate web proxies, I can also tell you there's usually someone who knows what they're doing administering them. Besides the "implied consent" of being on an employer network, you also have people at the company who know how to ensure bad SSL from the proxy -> website will not be permitted.

If the MITM function of bitdefender isn't advertised, how can anyone consent to it, or knowlegably ensure it's still enforcing connection resets on bad SSL certs?

hartz• 9 years ago

I feel like, instead of MITM'ing all TLS connections, antivirus companies could implement this same thing in a browser extension. If good ad blockers can prevent requests for ads from being completed, an antivirus extension should be able to do something similar, without having to tamper with the TLS connection between the browser and the site.

That being said, users would probably be much safer if they skipped the antivirus and just installed a decent ad blocker.

tyingq2• 9 years ago

At least with Chrome, the extension API doesn't allow you to "peek" into the content. You do have the ability to see the url before it's fetched[1], and block the fetch/redirect. But you can't see the data until it's too late.

[1]https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/webRequest#event-onB...

rocqua2• 9 years ago

How does that work with chromes certificate pinning for google? Do they do some runtime modification (e.g. DLL-injection) to disable the check?

ThisIs_MyName• 9 years ago

Cert pinning ignores root certs. This is by design :(

The Chromium browser disables pinning for certificate chains with private root certificates to enable various corporate content inspection scanners and web debugging tools (such as mitmproxy or Fiddler). The RFC 7469 standard recommends disabling pinning violation reports for "user-defined" root certificates, where it is "acceptable" for the browser to disable pin validation.

chopin• 9 years ago

It does not work with certificates installed by the user.

krisgenre• 9 years ago

Ya!

I only recently noticed this when Google chrome started marking even gmail.com as insecure on my dad's laptop.

Turned out that the Bitdefender license had expired and somehow this made certificate validation to fail?

zzm• 9 years ago

We recently published a paper on this exact issue and quantify the degree to which AV / corporate middlebox systems degrade the security of HTTPS connections. The tl;dr is that we find an alarming amount of MITM on the public internet (5-10%), mostly due to AV/middleboxes, and they almost always degrade the security of the connection.

*https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/interception-ndss17.pdf

hrez3• 9 years ago

Not to detract from the main point but for Bitdefender specifically ssl MITM looks like a paid feature. Which is ironic. So, just use free version. I am not sure if it sends out all the plain url's though. If anybody knows for sure please let us know.

interfixus• 9 years ago

This - minus the Microsoft part - is what I have been preaching for many years, even back in the late nineties, before pulling myself together and decamping for Linuxland.

But users insist. I have probably never convinced anyone to go without the AV, at least not on a permanent basis.

The best I can do is usually to set up som ClamWin and a daily or weekly scan for everybody's peace of mind.

z3t4• 9 years ago

While many AV companies are really bad, AV per say is still an extra layer of security. Telling people to remove a layer of security is bad advice. There's a problem though and if I knew how to solve it I'd be rich!

pabloski• 9 years ago

Security? The open more holes than they close.

guardian5x• 9 years ago

That's not how Security works at all. Its not about adding layers of security. That would imply installing 10 AntiVirus would be even better. But instead you're just increasing the attack surface, and slow your system down.

pvdebbe2• 9 years ago

It could be an extra level of security if they ran in userspace or in-between. But they usually have enormous permissions to operate and doesn't really count as a whole new layer.

draugadrotten• 9 years ago

if you really want to add an extra layer of security, add the layer outside your computer. You know, like adding a moat outside the castle.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/96/12/a6/9612a6cd6...

kriro2• 9 years ago

Some good points. The antivirus software itself is probably an interesting attack vector. However I don't like the assertion that Microsoft scanners are sufficient without some evidence (and In wouldn't be shocked if the MS-AV software itself was exploitable, too). At least run some tests and compare a couple of state of the art products.

The situation is generally bad, AV vendors are often shady. However I think "vet your AV vendor" is much better advice.

Beltiras• 9 years ago

Most computer users are not competent enough to use their machine properly (and need stronger AV to protect them). What makes you think they have the technical capability to "vet their AV vendor"?

kriro2• 9 years ago

Those users usually rely on some support structure which I assumed was the intended audience of the article. At least I wouldn't expect my parents to even search the internet for some article that tells them to turn off all antivirus except Defender.

franciscop2• 9 years ago

I will consider this. I "maintain" my relatives computers which is basically to install an anti-virus and adblock. They still get those sketchy messages from friends from time to time though, which is the main reason that I keep them with an AV. Is this correct? Does AV improve security for people who cannot differentiate between a .pdf and an .exe?

Personally I don't use an AV, I am a bit paranoid and technical competent so my case and my relatives is totally different.

gtirloni4• 9 years ago

I don't use an AV either, but I'm very careful with the things I download (and I don't download new stuff very often).

My relatives, on the other hand, will click just about anything that says "click me" (even more if it says they will win a prize or something).

Windows Defender is great and it's enough for me but my relatives need something that cover more areas. Any way you can think of tricking them, they will fall for it. Even with AV, they routinely install malware (those that are too new to be in the AV database or using new techniques not covered by heuristics).

As far as I know, my relatives don't do anything but sit in front of their computers trying to install malware ;)

roca5• 9 years ago

An iOS device, or better still a Chromebook, would be pretty good for users like these.

nashashmi• 9 years ago

My love for Windows Defender came when it was called Giant Anti-Spyware (founded by Oz). It managed to find 4 pieces of spyware on my computer, and I consider myself technically competent enough to clean spyware manually.

When I ran the same software on another computer, it managed to find 3284 pieces of malware. And to think I was planning on doing it manually, eh eh. (It had an antispyware software that did nothing.)

Eventually, Giant went mainstream and malware became smarter to work around it. At which point, MBAM came to the rescue. My next favorite anti-malware.

billpg2• 9 years ago

My pet gripe: Warning me about cookies as if they are malware.

Hydraulix989• 9 years ago

I've seen false negatives multiple times in Microsoft's.

neko_koneko6• 9 years ago

Ok, disclaimer first: I've previously worked at Kaspersky Lab (incident response division). Now, I want to say that many of the incidents that we have investigated, would have been prevented by anti-virus software (in many cases AV software was deliberately disabled by user). And I'm talking about incidents that resulted in million-dollar thefts - not just cases of some user getting cryptolocker on their home computer. I agree that AV software is bloated and has very large, messy and barely maintainable codebase, but I disagree with people who say that "I have never used any AV products and in 10 years have never been infected with malware" - this attitude is careless, to say the least, and in corporate environment could lead to huge financial losses. There are many criminal groups that put serious effort in the development and distribution of malware - not just script kiddies, but professional programmers and hackers.

BTW, there are also region-specific malware - so for example I would rely more on Kaspersky for detection of malware targeted at Russian businesses, than Symantec or Microsoft AVs.

kbart5• 9 years ago

I'm pretty sure no AV would help against targeted attacks on high profile target. If you have multi-million business to secure, you play at totally different risk model.

lmns2• 9 years ago

That's exactly what I had in mind when I read the GP. If third party AVs have a large and complex codebase with unknown or even known security flaws, they won't help much against targeted attacks or make them even easier.

On the other hand, AV usability is so bad you can't expect it to help "normal" people. All those popups do more harm than good when people start ignoring them.

NameNickHN• 9 years ago

Any AV software is better than having none but that's not the point of the article. It specifically recommends Microsoft's AV and to stay clear of all the others.

I'm sure it's hard on all the AV vendors out there but with Microsoft Essentials and Windows Defender I don't see the need for a third party AV.

bad_user9• 9 years ago

IMO, I think common sense, basic hygiene practices, a minimal education and a decent firewall goes a longer way, being much better than an AV could.

For example the most common way people get infected is by installing software from unreliable sources and by not keeping their computer up to date. I'm pretty sure that learning to regularly update your OS and browser, learning to search, recognize and use the official sources for software, to stop doing software piracy for that matter, learning to not click on .exe files received in emails and to be suspicious of all attachments, learning to uninstall everything that infects your browser with useless plugins, I'm pretty sure such simple knowledge would cut 99.9% of all incidents.

Most software vulnerabilities in the wild are not novel, "zero day" exploits are not that common. This is why even though I hate Microsoft's recent update policies, on the other hand I understand their newfound aggressiveness in pushing those updates, as it is really frustrating that users ignore update warnings. I also appreciate Chrome's fast updates, which encouraged Firefox to do the same.

floatboth8• 9 years ago

Forget even Windows Defender. The one and only "AV" a normal user will ever need is…

Google Safe Browsing.

Seriously.

Anything you download is already checked with Google, why waste CPU cycles on checking it again locally?

Scea91• 9 years ago

One reason is that they simply do not perform as well on benchmarks. Other reason is that if there is only one AV vendor then it is a lot easier for developers of malware to penetrate systems than if there are dozens of vendors.

Const-me10• 9 years ago

Kaspersky is the worst of them:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-19/cybersecu...

dagenleg2• 9 years ago

How does that make them the worst?

summarite• 9 years ago

Sounds like they're choosing their battles just like the US ones.

My takeaway here is not to trust either Russia or US based companies, as none of them will escape working with the secret services. China and India have plenty of exploitative AV like software as well, mainly for mobile.

Are there any European AV? Or Japanese? Or South African? I'd love to have something that has an eye eg on Microsoft's products, because there's no doubt that they have backdoors and report home.

WhitneyLand• 9 years ago

https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/01/kaspersky-labs-top-...

arpa• 9 years ago

Just to play the devils' advocate, I do think that the attitude of "never use AV products" could work in corporate environment, provided the administrators are competent and draconian enough to counter-weight the absolute incompetence of users (because, frankly, the largest attack surface is the incompetence of the user):

use security policies of the domain to only allow whitelisted applications to be run;

restrict internet use to whitelisted destinations;

configure mail servers to accept only whitelist sources, use DKIM/DMARC, and reject multipart messages.

Mandate usage of wired-only HID peripherals which are soldered to the port. Don't use wifi, and physically secure the access to network wires.

Glue shut all other computer ports.

Go all-out Saudi-arabian with people who don't comply with security policies and punish them by removing digits and public hangings for repeated offenses.

It's really that simple.

freehunter• 9 years ago

I work as a security consultant for a major tech company and my clients are almost always Fortune 500 (with some Fortune 100 companies, and at least one top-10 company). When they hire us, we get to learn everything about their security infrastructure.

The trend is clear: AV is out, Carbon Black (or Crowdstrike, etc) is in. This is especially prominent in the financial industry. My wife works at a tiny local bank and they're doing trials of Carbon Black.

AV is terrible software, the chemotherapy of the security world. It only exists because it's slightly better than the alternative, and if you don't have an active disease, it acts as a disease of its own. You're glad its there when it saves your life, but you curse its name every day. Application whitelisting tools don't interfere with the day-to-day workings of your computer, but don't let the bad stuff in. You're only allowed to run the software you need to run, and nothing else.

It's not set-it-and-forget-it like AV, but it's a damn sight more effective and less annoying to the users.

lmm8• 9 years ago

in many cases AV software was deliberately disabled by user

Right, because the only way AV software can ever be effective is if it blocks things that legitimate programs also do (if a given piece of functionality has no legitimate uses it wouldn't be in the OS in the first place) - so users get in the habit of disabling it. Installing a piece of software that e.g. stops you running any downloaded .exe files is useless - if you didn't want to run the .exe you wouldn't be trying to run it, and if you do want to run it you'll turn off the antivirus. If you just want to disallow it completely, you can do that at the OS level easily enough.

There is no magic that AV can do to make it any easier to tell legitimate software from not. Reactive scanning for specific threats is ineffective in the modern era - by the time AV knows about a new form of malware most of the damage has already been done. So all that AV can do is monitor what programs do and apply inherently unreliable heuristics, and maybe be more or less sensitive about those heuristics than the OS is.

ivan_gammel3• 9 years ago

Example with .exe files isn't good one. Modern AVs may do better job than just blocking them. I use Norton AV, which shows a report summary on new downloaded files, based on which I can make informed decision on whether to launch it or not (I personally launch immediately only trusted executables and google for any issues of the rest). The same can be done with all threats: AVs warn, provide some details and let users decide what to do.

delegate• 9 years ago

Who writes all these viruses ?

I mean, I've experimented with assembler when I was a teenager and I may have developed some kind of program which could replicate itself.. but I highly doubt today's viruses are written by teenagers...

Who and why do people write viruses ? Is this a thing at all or are all the viruses written by the Antivirus makers themselves ?

More 'threats' is good news for the A/V makers so why not have a separate department which develops them ?

I wouldn't be surprised at all, given that much crazier things are happening in this world..

Can anyone confirm or disprove this ?

neko_koneko6• 9 years ago

There are many criminal groups that develop malware - it's a multi-million dollar business.

Maakuth• 9 years ago

If you have some time to watch a video, here's a clip of F-Secure's Mikko Hyppönen expaining some of the origins of network attacks and malware: https://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_fighting_viruses_de...

hsivonen4• 9 years ago

Speaking of F-Secure, has taviso just not looked at F-Secure yet or does F-Secure not have egregious blunders?

gtirloni4• 9 years ago

Confirm that AV vendors are writing the viruses themselves in order to boost their sales? Good luck with that.

There are plenty of reasons why people write malware/viruses, often for financial reasons. The old days of a teenager writing some virus in assembly to infect bootsectors for the lulz is way past us. Today you're looking at malware, often exploiting social engineering, to create botnets for DDoS, spam, boosting social profiles, etc.

Occam's razor helps :)

billbail• 9 years ago

If you want to know more about the creators of these viruses I'd highly suggest reading Krebs on Security [1] as he often not only covers the viruses but also some of the authors.

[1] http://krebsonsecurity.com/

yrio• 9 years ago

What about open source antivirus software like ClamAV?

floatboth8• 9 years ago

Usually used on email servers.

exadeci• 9 years ago

It's perfect!

I use http://www.clamwin.com/ which is just an easy way to install it.

There was a pdf about antiviruses that was posted a few month ago IIRC and they all had huge flaws except surprisingly ClamAv which had minor ones.

tehabe• 9 years ago

Just yesterday I had the computer of a friend in front of me, it had three anti-virus applications installed. No idea which was running. I wonder though, do those uninstall mechanism actually work and remove everything?

I kinda have my doubts.

doczoidberg2• 9 years ago

half offtopic: do I need an AV software on my android smartphone? Friends always ask me which they should use (because I am the "computer guy") and I tell them that I don't have one.

floatboth8• 9 years ago

If you don't install pirated apps from shady sources, you absolutely do not need AV on your Android device.

tootie• 9 years ago

My android seems to have some sneeky adware on it and I've never installed anything not for the Google or Amazon stores or written myself.

Osiris• 9 years ago

This is what I tell my family and friends. Whenever I help someone upgrade to Windows 10, or work on their computer, I tell them to just use Microsoft Defender.

I've also read various reports of security problems with AV software, so I'm not comfortable recommending anything third-party.

Defender + uBlock is a pretty simple and effective combo.

roryisok• 9 years ago

I've been beating this drum for years, MS Security Essentials is the only passably decent antivirus app there is, and seems to be the only one that doesn't try to scare users into paying for upgrades.

ForFreedom• 9 years ago

I got for free Norton Security with my new Dell laptop. On installing I was unable to enable windows defender or firewall. Norton takes over the security by default.

I contacted Symantec and had to uninstall Norton Security and install Norton Antivirus for the windows firewall to be activated.

hsivonen4• 9 years ago

The first thing you should do with a PC is to delete all partitions and install a fresh OS. Even if you aren't installing Linux, you should download untampered Windows 10 (the same edition that the PC came licensed for) from Microsoft and do a fresh install without OEMware.

WorldMaker5• 9 years ago

Or make sure you buy a "Signature Edition" PC in the first place, which is Microsoft's program for "junk free" systems [1] you can find in Microsoft Stores or if you ask the right Best Buy or office store.

[1] https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/categor...

StreamBright3• 9 years ago

Anti-virus software is an anti-pattern in general. Having more bugs and backdoors than the rest of the applications combined. I havent been using anti-virus for the last 5-10 years I have just a simple rule set for using internet and it proved to be sufficient for me. However, I have many friends with anti-virus softwares and they still got viruses on their systems. I guess this is anecdotal evidence but I would like to see a comprehensive study on how effective anti-virus systems are.

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.hu/2016/06/how-to-comprom...

fuzzy2• 9 years ago

I'd like to agree. But I can't. Even if disregard detection scores, Defender/Security Essentials is slow. It uses humongous amounts of CPU time, which slows down slower PCs (like Celeron N3150) a lot. It also tends to saturate disk I/O.

In short: It sucks so bad it's virtually unusable.

mtgx2• 9 years ago

What's wrong with avoiding Microsoft anti-virus, too? Or os he giving this advice only because most people can't disable Microsoft's antivirus anymore, anyway?

roca5• 9 years ago

Because my guess is that Defender is reasonably implemented and does the basics right, and therefore is significantly better than nothing for the average user. That guess is based on anecdotal observations of the quality of developers and practices at Microsoft vs what we've learned about A/V vendors via bug disclosures.

robjan• 9 years ago

It's explained in the article

adamconroy• 9 years ago

AV software is a great example of a cure being worse than the disease

SuperVivid• 9 years ago

Couldn't be said oft enough. Still seeing people buying a new "security suite" every year.

baal80spam• 9 years ago

In principle, I agree with the article.

Personally, on Win7 I use a combination of 3 things:

- MSSE - TinyWall as a lightweight firewall - heavily modified HOSTS file

Never had malware/virus problems and sometimes I do visit shady webistes or download quirky software.

huhtenberg• 9 years ago

You want to add EMET to the mix.

https://microsoft.com/emet

mtgx2• 9 years ago

Yeah, trust Microsoft, he said:

http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14381174/microsoft-thailan...

Isn't it funny how at the same time someone is recommending to not trust other anti-viruses because they MITM you with their own certificates, Microsoft is doing the same god damn thing, or worse (allowing a whole country to spy on you through it, and not just itself).

“This program is an extensive review process that includes regular audits from a third-party web trust auditor.

Is that the same auditor that audited WoSign as well?

https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/10/24/distrusting-new...

Why hasn't Microsoft started requiring Certificate Transparency yet for all certificates? Maybe then I'll believe them when they say they're sure nothing wrong is going on here.

galfarragem2• 9 years ago

Any relevant information about Avast? I'm using their free version for 10 years and don't have any major complains.

smasty• 9 years ago

Avast also does HTTPS MITM. It's on by default, but can be disabled in Web shield preferences.

I've just tested it in a clean VM running Windows 7, and the MITM didn't work in current Firefox stable, but it did in IE. However, as far as I can tell, it only MITMs DV certificates, not EV. Also, when it MITMs a self-signed certificate, it generates an untrusted certificate, but it says it was generated by Avast, so the user could trust it more easily.

Also, in my experience, the free version of Avast considerably affects performance on slower machines (no SSD, earlier-gen CPU, etc.), but YMMV. It also tries to install Chrome as a default browser, a Google toolbar for IE, various "Secure browsing" extensions to other browsers and lot's of other annoying crap.

karlb• 9 years ago

Does this apply to Macs?

I know that many Mac users don't use anti-virus. Are they right not to?

floatboth8• 9 years ago

If you don't download apps from random shady sources, you don't really need AV. Recent versions of macOS default to only allowing apps from the App Store.

hmage• 9 years ago

Recent versions of macOS default to only allowing apps from the App Store.

That's incorrect, with the introduction of Gatekeeper the default setting for it was to allow only signed apps — all app store apps are signed, but developer can sign apps outside of app store. The default setting didn't change since then.

jagger11• 9 years ago

security software doesn't mean secure software

jug• 9 years ago

For the past years it seems like even Windows (given the large attack surface) viruses/trojans have become much less common than in the past. I think the first line of defense in web browsers and various techs like SmartScreen etc. has helped especially with fishy porn ad ridden websites wanting to download FixWindows.exe, but also that we've moved to often use cloud oriented tools. Nowadays we visit websites to get things done way more often than in the 80's / 90's when we ran executables from some friend's diskette or hard drive. And as long as we visit websites it's way too much effort to exploit weaknesses in their sandboxes that this is then almost entirely about targetted attacks.

Another example of how obnoxious it is becoming to merely _get_ to someone's computer to infect it now that users rely less on executables, is that the Fake Indian Microsoft Support Technician has become a thing. Actual humans calling other humans and hoping for the best by social engineering. This is so far fetched and works so rarely that the desperation is real.

E-mail has been another traditional way of getting to someone but that's nowadays mostly Outlook.com or Gmail.com, which have their own very efficient AV systems in place.

I guess my point with this is that even Microsoft's so-so antivirus tool (given that it's less intrusive) should indeed be enough. Hell I think a user with common sense will be fine with no AV whatsoever for longer than one may think.

gravypod• 9 years ago

How about we avoid all antivirus software, integrate virtualization as a key feature of the UI of our operating system, and completely sandbox all apps. We have the technology to do this (Qubes does it now) but it's not going mainstream. I don't know why but I think this would be the end goal of computing. Completely segregate your work from your machine and only give it access to things that make sense. (Chrome doesn't need to see /etc/nginx or be able to run systemctl).

I also don't think we should trust Microsoft to not use similar exploits as other AV products in the future and I think the biggest problem here is primarily an issue for proprietary software.

One example is "Furthermore, as Justin Schuh pointed out in that Twitter thread, AV products poison the software ecosystem because their invasive and poorly-implemented code makes it difficult for browser vendors and other developers to improve their own security"

I have a hard time beliving that a libre-AV would have this problem. I've never seen bad architecture prevent security fixes and I've never seen bad architecture stay for long when it's only one rewrite away from being fixed. (I'm making no comments about compatability because no doubt even the command arguments will be renamed and their order will be changed)

Klathmon• 9 years ago

We have the technology to do this (Qubes does it now) but it's not going mainstream.

It is starting to go mainstream. Most mobile phones do a lesser form of this, most "web apps" do a very similar form of this, even new windows 10 UWP apps are pushing in this direction.

Everyone knows it's needed, and many see how good of a solution it is, and how much MORE can be done once there is a good baseline, but that line needs to be walked very carefully.

Once apps stop being able to do their job because of un-escapable restrictions, it becomes a problem. And once it becomes a problem, people (both developers and users) will start actively trying to get around it, which means it's not going to work at all.

sjellis• 9 years ago

How about we avoid all antivirus software, integrate virtualization as a key feature of the UI of our operating system, and completely sandbox all apps.

This is basically the end-game for Flatpak:

https://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2017/01/24/the-flatpak-securit...

Flatpak is vendor-neutral, but it will provide the sandbox isolation that may then enable Fedora to ramp up to Atomic Workstation, a fully containerized desktop OS:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/AtomicWorkstation

Hopefully we will see other Linux distributions integrate the technology as it matures.

FWIW, Microsoft are developing VM-based isolation for the browser:

https://threatpost.com/microsoft-edge-adds-app-guard-browser...

emodendroket14• 9 years ago

One of the nice properties of PC applications is the ease of interoperation in ways not necessarily envisioned by the original authors of the software; in a purely sandboxed world that goes away.

warcode• 9 years ago

Haven't had any issues with ESET NOD32 in the last 10 years.

I've turned off the MITM on https though.

dirtyaura• 9 years ago

If you need AV, consider F-secure. They do quality products and take security seriously.

Mikko Hyppönen, famous for his TED talk, is from F-Secure https://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_fighting_viruses_de...

DavideNL• 9 years ago

A year ago F-Secure had very bad detection results in AV comparatives test. However, it seems they have fixed that now... http://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php?chart=chart2&yea...

youdontknowtho• 9 years ago

I've often wondered how much energy has been waster on AV. All of those hard drives thrashing and all of those scans.

pbhjpbhj• 9 years ago

It's probably sold a lot of PC upgrades too.

JustSomeNobody• 9 years ago

What always bothered me about MS Windows was that for a long time one HAD to use 3rd party AV SW. This should have been MS's responsibility from the very beginning. I don't go to third parties for seatbelts and anti-lock brakes when I buy a car. I shouldn't have had to use a 3rd party AV SW.

rocqua2• 9 years ago

Linux doesn't supply a 1st party AV solution either.

Windows maybe could've responded faster to the creation of so many viruses, but it takes a really popular OS for AV to become a neccesity.

WorldMaker5• 9 years ago

Microsoft had an injunction from the anti-trust lawsuit that they couldn't bundle AV with Windows because that would be "anti-competitive", which is why Security Essentials had to be downloaded for XP/Vista instead of just coming installed. Lucky for all of us the statute of limitations on that decision finally expired.

I agree, something like AV should be a function of the OS, not a "competitive" (race-to-the-security-theater-bottom) bolt-on from some third party.

Spooky23• 9 years ago

Pretty questionable advice.

Microsoft AV is fast and non-disruptive, but is a laggard in terms of effectiveness, even by the standard of AV.

It's best used when you need to check the AV box, and it is less disruptive than other solutions.

Roritharr• 9 years ago

My main problem with this state of affairs is compliance. We have customers that require us to get certain certifications from TÜV. The TÜV asks your whole company to have certified AV Software in place on all machines. They do not accept Windows Defender as a dedicated AV Solution, or atleast did not the last time.

I'm still unsure what to tell them about our Macs and Linux Notebooks that we've acquired since the last audit.

Does anyone have a solution for this?

tptacek• 9 years ago

In case you're wondering, this is basically the advice that most security people will give you as well, if you exclude "antivirus people" (who are really off in their own weird world), all of whom will say "use our company's product first, but no matter what you do, don't use Microsoft's".

cube00• 9 years ago

Tried this with my parents, they said "can you guarantee that this free Microsoft thing will catch everything McAfee would?".

There is a lot to be said for the skepticism around "free" products.

herbst• 9 years ago

I always think its super funny when a fucking ad pops up on someone desktop. Usually done by anti virus tools. And how casually people click it away is just amazing.

justin66• 9 years ago

Any idea why the author is picking on Windows 7 here? Microsoft's free AV works as well on Windows 7 as it does on Windows 10.

Perhaps it should go without saying --- but you also need to your OS to be up-to-date. If you're on Windows 7 or, God forbid, Windows XP, third party AV software might make you slightly less doomed.

jamesgeck0• 9 years ago

Microsoft's free AV works on Windows 7, but was only installed by default starting in Windows 8.

hydrogen18• 9 years ago

As a former IT support guy, I can't explain how much revenue Norton would generate from me. They would regularly push updates that wiped all the critical software from customer's systems. The software was often obscure products from small vendors. Even in a small office, it was an easy day's work for me that I would not have had otherwise.

After multiple episodes of this, it dawned on me that I shouldn't be able to reinstall the software if Norton truly was removing it. The issue was that Norton's products did indeed remove it as part of an antivirus "update", but they quickly released another "update" that got rid of the problem. I turned off something labeled "pulse" updates and set it to daily instead. Not only did I never see this problem again, the PC's generally had better performance.

khana• 9 years ago

"I did this 10 years ago..." True dat.

hexmiles• 9 years ago

Reading trought the comments, i see that a lot of people don't like antivirus, but what alternative we have, is mcrosoft antivirus really a better alternative.

I personaly have avast installed and i don't like it very much, i find it too invasive (it keep prompting to delete an firefox addons from test pilot, for example) and i always disable https scanning, but from comparison that i found online, seem that microsoft AV do much worse in respect to others.

what HN crow suggest to protect a Windows machine (win10), is microsoft AV really better or just like the others?

ndesaulniers• 9 years ago

One of Mozilla's previous CEOs and a bunch of big wigs now work at AVG.

avenoir• 9 years ago

Curious to know why people are still running antiviruses. I haven't had one running since, i believe, Windows 7 release and switching over to Chrome/Firefox from IE but even IE is very resistant to threats these days.

cpeterso• 9 years ago

AV causes all sorts of problems for Firefox, such as startup crashes or, in some cases, AV MITM breaking Firefox updates, leaving users stranded on old Firefox versions. In Firefox 53, Mozilla is starting to purposely make it more difficult for extensions to rummage around in native code and external software to inject DLLs into the running Firefox process:

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2017/01/24/preventing-add-on...

jdc0589• 9 years ago

Here's the deal, there are two DISTINCT classes of traditional AV software. One generally sucks, the other does not.

First: free AV, generally marketed to the individual or small business. If it's free, they are making money somehow; you are almost never getting it for free out of the goodness of the vendor's heart. Most of this stuff is crap, introduces ridiculous vulnerabilities in lots of instances, and can wreak havoc on totally clean machines. For this class of AV, I 100% agree with OP; kill it with fire (aside from maybe malwarebytes).

Second: paid AV products targeted towards large businesses and the enterprise. Some of them still suck, but a lot of them are pretty good, and responsible + low impact in general. We have ESET deployed to ~700 machines and have yet to have a SINGLE problem caused by the AV while I've been here. Some of those are workstations, but a huge number are servers (granted, they get a special kind of av, not the full suite of web protection and everything).

That said, traditional AV is becoming more and more useless every month and is starting to do very little aside from catch browser toolbars, random adware, and if you don't have a firewall it can sometimes help block known bad websites (at a cost). We have also had a fair number of instances where malicious crap made it past MULTIPLE layers of email security and was caught by AV on a workstation. Malware is not distributed such that every payload has consistent content/file-hash anymore, the alternative products out there that have a chance at pseudo-reliably catching real malicious stuff are neither free, cheap, or realistically going to be deployed outside of medium to large companies.

Endy• 9 years ago

Nah, I'll stick with Avast & HitManPro, thanks.

fowse• 9 years ago

That's awesome man

Avoid Non-Microsoft Antivirus Software

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