Re: MS Anti Virus?

[Ron DuFresne <dufresne () winternet com>]

They did this years back in the 90's anyone remember pctools, and their
offerings?  Guess what was bundled under DOS 6.2, might have gone back to
DOS 6.0, but, pctools is no longer in the market...and was the norton
counterpart/competition at the time...so, this would be a reentry...

Thanks,

Ron DuFresne


On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, Gregory A. Gilliss wrote:

> Dan et al:
>
> You are missing the point here. While it matters little *who* is in the A/V
> market, it matters very much when one player is Microsoft, because the M$
> business model (according to them and to the US DOJ) is to enter a market,
> undercut the market, co-opt the market, drive out the competition, and
> move on to the next market (not unlike a virus, as told by Agent Smith).
> So if M$ enters the A/V market and "bundles" their solution with Windows
> whatever, they likely will drive Symantec and McAfee out of the market
> over time by co-opting the A/V subscription market.
>
> The security ramifications of a M$ only A/V marketplace relate to Dan Geer's
> monoculture argument (already well discussed here) and also a conflict of
> interest (since M$ products account for a majority of the A/V infections).
> Can we "trust" an A/V solution from M$ that addresses virus infections of
> M$ products? And is M$ controls both the virus host and the A/V inoculation,
> does that not create a potential area of abuse - no license/upgrade/whatever,
> no A/V subscription/update/whatever?
>
> As Reagan told Gorbachev, "Let me tell you why we do not trust you..."
>
> G
>
> On or about 2004.06.17 15:51:19 +0000, DAN MORRILL (dan_20407 () msn com) said:
>
> > You make anti virus software sound like a gun lock on a 9MM.
> >
> > Does it really matter who is in the anti-virus market? If Microsoft goes
> > that way, and they have the best knowledge of what they created, what we
> > can reasonably expect to see in the words of Bill Gates "Innovation, with
> > rich user features, deeply embeded in our software".
> >
> > So, we can have an AV product that does great things, but maybe only 2% of
> > it will be used, and because it is a microsoft product, we can expect
> > patches every month, with known and unknown vulnerabilites from day one.
>
> --
> Gregory A. Gilliss, CISSP                              E-mail: greg () gilliss com
> Computer Security                             WWW: http://www.gilliss.com/greg/
> PGP Key fingerprint 2F 0B 70 AE 5F 8E 71 7A 2D 86 52 BA B7 83 D9 B4 14 0E 8C A3
>
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