Microsoft Locking Out Anti-Virus Makers?

twitter writes "Anti-virus makers have more to fear than stonewalling by Microsoft if a report by Agnitum, maker of Outpost Personal Firewall, is right about recent trusted computing changes. All the problems were summarized in a choice Register quote, 'In addressing the potential problem of not being able to install Outpost on new versions of Windows, we have discovered that it is possible to drill past the new security measures introduced by Microsoft - if we use the same techniques used by hackers.'"

ORly?

[Umbral Blot]

As someone who has written drivers for Windows before I think Microsoft's patch is a step in the right direction. It is simply too easy to spy on the user and hide the driver under the current system. If that means that anti-virus software has to be updated, and has to bug the user with more "are you sure this is OK" boxes ... well tough, sometimes that is the price of security.

This is a bogus complaint.

[Dogun]

You can do your antivirus activites just fine using supported methods and interfaces, and it doesn't require patching kernel code.

Filesystem filter driver. Possibly some other filter drivers. Cleaning service. Low-privilege interface. That's all you need.

Re:Microsoft is just isolating itself

[DrScott]

Apple may be bundling software, but the difference is that the user is _totally free_ to use competitor's software. I use other browsers, other word processors, and other multimedia software than those supplied by Apple alongside their products. Competitor's software is not crippled. Yet you have no problems defending Microsoft trying to make everybody use only their software. Microsoft was _convicted_ of anti-trust violations in the US and Europe (and is being investigated in other regions too) not because they bundled products, but because they consistently tried to do so in unethicals way that drove competitors out of business.