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Comment by arghwhat | Hacker News Reader

The title is somewhat misleading, as it suggests an io_uring issue when there is none - it's just that anti-virus solutions like Microsoft Defender try to monitor syscalls but don't monitor io_uring.

They're far from guaranteed to catch things they monitor anyway, and I feel they mostly just exist to let enterprise pretend they care about security by buying ineffective band aids and duct tape. I guess a legal defense is more important than a technical one.

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You are right that this is not an io_uring issue.

  I think you under estimate the value of anti-virus.  Anti virus software is a good second line of defense.  It’s not perfect but it will stop a lot of known malware.  This has value.

I wouldn't consider it a second line of defense - as a rule of thumb, it will only catch old and overused attack vectors, and rarely well.

Anything novel will fly right past it, and it will have false positives. Plastering ineffective or mildly effective security everywhere in the name of "defense in depth" can have negative value as it reduces diligence in applying more relevant security measures that aren't just a random package install.

It like the last line of defence. If you are lucky, it helps.

I cannot upvote this hard enough.

I see this all the time with VPNs. By having everything behind the company VPN, application security isn't taken as seriously. As a result, lateral access becomes trivial at these companies.

Keeping everything public internet exposed from the start actually results in better security.

Security software can have negative value when it increases attack surface[0], shuts down infrastructure[1], impedes productivity or pushes users towards workarounds that make things overall less secure.

[0] page 11 https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/m-trends-2025-en.p... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41002195

Read Travis Ormandy’s take-downs of Sophos or Symantec antivirus software. They are so sloppily written they vastly increase your exposure, including zero-click exploitation by simply receiving a crafted message.

Anti virus is also a good second attack vector so sometimes anti virus is the reason for malware in the system in the first place.

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