Comment by zamalek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zamalek | Hacker News Reader

Composition/division. This is true for many 3rd party AVs, but not all of them.

> More likely, they hurt security significantly; for example, see bugs in AV products listed in Google's Project Zero.

This is not an indicator of insecure software. Not dealing with these disclosures are. Just a few weeks ago a major vulnerability was found in Defender.

Let's use my favorite AV as an example, NOD32:

- It performs HTTPS MITM which should obviously be disabled immediately. Score 1 Microsoft.

- Javascript runtime running as SYSTEM, which can't be disabled. Score 1 NOD32.

- There are two issues in Project Zero, making it exactly as secure as Defender according to that ignorant "vulnerabilities in Project Zero" metric.

- 4 days and 1 day for NOD32. 8 days and 3 days for Microsoft. Score 1 NOD32.

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

- The NOD32 intrusion detection supposedly thwarted EternalBlue (Wanacry).[1] Defender did nothing. Score 1 NOD32.

[1]: http://support.eset.com/alert6442/

The NOD32 intrusion detection supposedly thwarted EternalBlue (Wanacry). Defender did nothing.

Because Defender didn't need to do anything on a currently patched Windows machine. Call it a draw, although this entire comparison is deeply silly.

I am pragmatic about the SSL MITM thing. For what it's worth it does correctly validate certs and I'll bet it's certs and revocations are updated more frequently than the browsers. If you don't trust the fact that your web traffic is passing through antivirus then what do you trust and why aren't you running Gentoo?

If you don't trust the fact that your web traffic is passing through antivirus then what do you trust and why aren't you running Gentoo?

That doesn't follow at all. My plaintext traffic going through Chrome is likely far safer than my traffic going through the software of some middling Slovakian AV vendor.

I used NOD32 before they actively took part in Russian war against Ukraine (on Russian side), and to the garbage dump they went.

Wait, a Slovakian company participated in a Russian War against Ukraine?

They exposed a spying operation against Russia government terrorists working on Ukrainian territory. Technically they did nothing wrong and also there no visible ties of them to any Russian structure, government or private. But as a regular Ukrainian citizen I have no need to have 100% unfalsifiable evidence for court, I just need sufficient amount of related information and high enough probability to consider this true. Russian bastards are killing thousands of our citizens, dozens every week and eliminating any suspicious software that may be related to them is an actual need.

Not to mention that no one should trust something that is made by MS that has that much control over your system after the windows 10 shitstorm with self-enabling telemetry settings and forced updates/upgrades.

You know, if you're using Windows you're already trusting Microsoft completely.

Windows already has full control over your system.

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