How have MS' own security tools (Firewall and MSE) fared in W8/2012? Presumably they also needed rewriting?
Avira antivirus patched but still not fully Windows 8 ready
Avira has rolled out a patch that makes its popular freebie anti-virus software more compatible with Windows 8. Earlier this month the German firm admitted its products were not yet compatible with Windows 8 after users complained that attempting to run Avira's software on Microsoft's latest operating system results in the …
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Friday 16th November 2012 12:18 GMT Ilgaz
No AV vendor has guts to say it
If there are such radical changes, why nobody questions the lack of a proper, documented security sdk& API which will stop the need to code horrible hacks?
Like defrag API coded after similar nightmare happening in windows 98. They designed (actually another company) something that will cover all needs by defragmenters, everyone plugged in.
Actually, EU can ask them. Why compete instead of provide something that is expected from a vendor?
Even Apple provides something close, fsevents takes most of the need to inject self to kernel.
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Friday 16th November 2012 12:41 GMT TeeCee
Re: No AV vendor has guts to say it
IIRC, MS tried to force the A/V vendors to go via the APIs in 7, cutting off the ability to dive onto the metal, shove in their own low-level I/O drivers and subvert the O/S completely.
The A/V types threatened legal action and they were forced to back down.
Swings and roundabouts. If they were to do it, on the plus side an A/V fuckup wouldn't bluescreen the O/S. On the minus side, pwning the O/S could easily foil A/V scanning and checks by merely being a bit choosy about what the APIs present....
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Friday 16th November 2012 12:24 GMT Skoorb
I've seen this happen before.
A rather well liked (by customers) anti-virus firm did this with Windows 7 SP1.
Any ESET product didn't work with SP1 (at all, as in total crash), and there were loads of customers, both companies and individuals, trying to file support requests and bug reports from the first preview. Eset's response was "we don't support pre-release software". Everyone had to wait for the thing to hit general availability before Eset would open a bug (and everyone who tried to install SP1 going mental). Cue a heck of a lot of scrambling around by them to get a fix out - took them two weeks and then they had to improve that later.
So, I'm guessing this was another "we refuse to test against anything that hasn't hit general availability yet" policy.
Not good.
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Friday 16th November 2012 22:26 GMT Ryan Spooner
Or, you know... they could get off their lazy arses and test their products against the early builds of new OSes. One of hte main reasons Microsoft releases early versions. Then if it doesn't work or causes major crashes, they could block their products from being installed onto those OSes until they were ready. Instead of keeping quiet, letting customers try the software, and then have angry customers with dead machines.
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Sunday 18th November 2012 01:20 GMT BillG
Blame Avira
> Independent testing lab AV-Test.org reports that the vast majority of anti-virus vendors in the market already offer Windows 8-compatible products to consumers.
If Avira's products gave a BSOD on Windows 8, then why didn't Avira's installation program prevent install on Windows 8?
According to Avira's forum, Avira's quality has declined after Avira 2010. Starting with Avira 2012 serving pop-up ads to the desktop (this is the PAID version) and config panel options not working, Instead of features, they provide excuses.