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Why Developers Hate Antiviruses

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Re: Why Developers Hate Antiviruses

#61

Post by redthrowaway »

someone13 wrote: post #53

There seems to be a lot of hate for antiviruses here on HN. I have this question, then - what kind of features would YOU want from an antivirus? If a startup was to launch tomorrow with some sort of antivirus or similar product, what would it need to have for you to buy/subscribe/etc.?

Basically, be MSE: unobtrusive. I haven't written anything for windows since high school, so I don't know how it stacks up for devs, but it's great from the user's pov. Free, lightweight, and invisible: everything I want in an antivirus program.

Re: Why Developers Hate Antiviruses

#62

Post by jgmmo »

politician wrote: post #56
freehunter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you get hit with a zero-day browser exploit that doesn't need you to install an exe to run.

Question: if he's hit with a zero-day exploit, how does having AV installed help?

Answer: Good definitions are crafted so that are intended to detect not only all existing versions seen but also allows room for change and file characteristic changes so that future versions of the malware family can be caught with the same definition.

Good definitions will go on killing items in the wild well past the date the initial zero-day came out (the one that caused the need for the definition in the first place).

This is why brand new generations of malware drop and they are detected by a few security guys. This is also why some people have huge #'s of FP's -- because they allow so much room for flexibility to catch future malware - that they accidentally kill off legit files in the process.

Re: Why Developers Hate Antiviruses

#63

Post by jgmmo »

pnathan wrote: post #55
jff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you spent the time to write a program, one good enough to consider selling it even, but couldn't be bothered to try changing the executable name? Or ask your dad to call the AV vendor? Am I mis-reading you?

I did ask my dad to call. Nothing seemed to come of it. I was working in a hurry and didn't think to simply change the exe name, making the presumption that such a simple thing shouldn't influence the AV decision.

The name of the .exe certainly matters.

When going through airport security, do you think it matters at all if your name is Osama Bin Laden? Such a person is going to experience a much larger degree of scrutiny from TSA then a person named John Smith.

Re: Why Developers Hate Antiviruses

#64

Post by kstenerud »

pnathan wrote: post #55
jff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you spent the time to write a program, one good enough to consider selling it even, but couldn't be bothered to try changing the executable name? Or ask your dad to call the AV vendor? Am I mis-reading you?

I did ask my dad to call. Nothing seemed to come of it. I was working in a hurry and didn't think to simply change the exe name, making the presumption that such a simple thing shouldn't influence the AV decision.

Why didn't you install the AV software on your machine, get the false positive, then call the company on your own behalf?

Or just impersonate your father on the phone?

Re: Why Developers Hate Antiviruses

#65

Post by mey »

As an former Windows user who never ran A/V because of the stated reasons, in my old age I've finally broken down started using one as rebuilding a box is no longer high on my priority list. If you are a home user on windows, I highly highly recommend http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/security...

It's free, it stays the hell out of the way, doesn't slow the system down, and works.

Edit: I do not work for Microsoft, and this post was written on a netbook running Ubuntu.

Re: Why Developers Hate Antiviruses

#66

Post by gnu8 »

> Because if your software has some kind of copy-protection built-in (encrypts and stores serial numbers, hides and encrypts parts of the source code to protect from reverse engineering etc.) - an antivirus will most likely detect some "very dangerous" trojan.

Don't waste your time with this crap. You don't have any secrets on my computer. I will crack your DRM and reverse engineer as I please.

Re: Why Developers Hate Antiviruses

#67

Post by barrkel »

tadfisher wrote: post #41
bwarp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's MSE thinking that something has modified the hosts file and resetting it. I'd go for an ad blocker rather than a hosts file hack. Adblock plus works fine on Firefox and Chrome. There are TPL subscriptions for IE that block everything (google around for them).

Privoxy works everywhere a proxy will, and can use Adblock filter lists.

Adblock (or rather, AdBlockPlus) can hide elements within web pages. Killing images and the like is only the beginning of a decent adblocker.

Re: Why Developers Hate Antiviruses

#68

Post by SomeOtherGuy »

jgmmo wrote: post #63
pnathan wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did ask my dad to call. Nothing seemed to come of it. I was working in a hurry and didn't think to simply change the exe name, making the presumption that such a simple thing shouldn't influence the AV decision.

The name of the .exe certainly matters. When going through airport security, do you think it matters at all if your name is Osama Bin Laden? Such a person is going to experience a much larger degree of scrutiny from TSA then a person named John Smith.

That's a great example, as it shows anti-virus scammers are just as bad as the airport security scammers. Someone being named Osama Bin Laden has no bearing on their likelihood of hijacking a plane.

Re: Why Developers Hate Antiviruses

#69

Post by X-Istence »

redthrowaway wrote: post #61
someone13 wrote: post #53

There seems to be a lot of hate for antiviruses here on HN. I have this question, then - what kind of features would YOU want from an antivirus? If a startup was to launch tomorrow with some sort of antivirus or similar product, what would it need to have for you to buy/subscribe/etc.?

Basically, be MSE: unobtrusive. I haven't written anything for windows since high school, so I don't know how it stacks up for devs, but it's great from the user's pov. Free, lightweight, and invisible: everything I want in an antivirus program.

From a developers standpoint, MSE is pretty damn awesome. Never had an issue with it :P

Re: Why Developers Hate Antiviruses

#70

Post by GeoffWozniak »

mdaniel wrote: post #2

I was expected the article to discuss how much the HDD on your machine thrashes (and the fans sound like a jet engine) from scanning every .class and .jar file on your machine, of which there are usually tens of thousands. And I wish I had a Euro for every client site we've had to manage where some javascript scanner thinks it's so smart and drags the performance of a web-app to a crawl.

Or the SVN repositories of binaries that are 4G just on the trunk branch. The HDD basically never stops.
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