Posted on 04/04/2006 6:41:25 PM PDT by HAL9000
Excerpt -
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — In a rare discussion on the severity of the Windows malware scourge, a Microsoft security official said businesses should consider investing in an automated process to wipe hard drives and reinstall operating systems as a practical way to recover from malware infestation."When you are dealing with rootkits and some advanced spyware programs, the only solution is to rebuild from scratch. In some cases, there really is no way to recover without nuking the systems from orbit," Mike Danseglio, program manager in the Security Solutions group at Microsoft, said in a presentation at the InfoSec World conference here.
~ snip ~
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Great news. When did you last have to rebuild UNIX or VMS from scratch?
Well, that gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling!
ouch...
CRN: In terms of security, how do you compare security in Vista vs. security in Windows XP SP2? Allchin: SP2 was a very good system but compared to Vista, it's night and day. CRN: Is there going to be antivirus in Vista? Allchin: No, there is not. CRN: Why? Allchin: It's a complicated answer as to why not. CRN: Was the decision based on technical concerns? Allchin: It wasn't technical. CRN: Will Vista resolve security problems once and for all? Allchin: I'm not going to claim perfection or near perfection, but I think we're unrivaled in the work we've done.
In other words, there's NO technical reason to not include virus protection, BECAUSE WE MAKE MONEY FROM VIRUSES!
They offer virus protection at an EXTRA CHARGE. And it's always the NEXT VERSION which will be really, really, neat.
FYI
Truly you can't believe that. Microsoft loses money from virus. They do have 3rd party vendors that make money off viruses and they do like to keep them happy. Plus Microsoft isn't an anti-virus company. I'm not sure I'd trust their AV software. Kind of like running a windows shop with a windows firewall protecting everything. Or a unix shop with a unix firewall protecting everything. You're too open for attack by a single exploit/bug.
More likely they don't want to be sued by Norton, Macaffe, and the host of other anti-Virus makers. They went down this hard road once, with the crappy Netscape browser. BTW, you have to admit that the competion from both IE and Netscape made each much better. That is why I am glad there is Firebird or Fox or whatever out there.
I had installed the Microcrap anti-spyware software on my XP Media Center Edition box and also installed Spybot S&D and Ad-Aware.
Every single time I ran the scan in the MS product it reported no problems. I'd turn around and immediately run Spybot and Ad-Aware's scans and they found problems that the Microcrap product didn't.
Needless to say, I uninstalled the Microcrap product.
I've also noticed a process that runs when I go into Task Manager called msnchecker.exe. If I leave it running and I'm connected to the internet, the hard drive goes ape and as I'm browsing the mouse pointer turns into the hourglass about 90% of the time. This is when there is no activity whatsoever like a page loading. When I kill the process, those symptoms go away. I can run any program and do anything without that process running. So part of my boot up routine is to kill that process immediately and another one I'm not sure about called esched.exe. It seems that if I left esched.exe running, the msnchecker.exe would re-launch itself in a matter of time.
What this seems to indicate (no I haven't researched it thoroughly yet, so no geek flames please) is that Microcrap has spyware built into this version of Windoze. Windoze phone home, if you will.
Fortunately, if you configure your machine properly, it is not difficult to rebuild Windows. Programs on C:, data on D:, right?
Just wipe C: and reinstall everything.
My Windoze XP Home Edition box has over 100,000 files and God knows how many directories (folders for MS twerps) on a clean install with no other apps or data on the drive.
Bloatware at its finest.
About the same time I was able to get UNIX or VMS to run the apps that run my business.
IOW, never.
All my systems run a full, unattended image backup daily, just in case. I've never had to restore anything yet; firewalling and antivirus protections are doing the job.
WinXP Pro and Win2k Pro are reliable and perfect for our business.
I say they sell more copies of Windows < next version >, because they promise it'll be better than Windows < current version >, so Joe Average has a reason to upgrade. They will sell a whole lot of whatever AV tool they offer with Vista, simply because they kept it out of the OS.
That is all...
I'm a former IT professional. I should sue Microcrap for all the time I've wasted re-installing Windoze and/or waiting for a machine to reboot after making changes.
All total, I've probably spent days and weeks combined waiting for systems to re-boot. Probably months all total re-installing crappy bloatware.
Definitely. It usually does. But the war's over, and both sides quit playing.
My personal favorite is Window 2000 Pro as far as MS is concerned. For me and my needs it's been the most hassle-free and stable of the MS operating systems I've dealt with.
That's the minimum, but it's not enough. I want the essential unchangeable operating system configuration files, registries, etc, physically separate from customizeable and site specific and layered product (as I call them) configuration files, even if they are logically linked and stored on drive C: in a directory that I know is reserved for this purpose, and can be wiped out or corrupted safely without affecting the base functions of the OS.
This should apply not just to the OS but to these layered products. Instead, such products themselves typically intermix data, configuration files with their software and essential files. Chaos reigns...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.