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Microsoft fixes 5-year-old Defender bug, reducing Firefox-related CPU use by 75%

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Re: Microsoft fixes 5-year-old Defender bug, reducing Firefox-related CPU use by 75%

#91

Post by dpkirchner »

jupp0r wrote: post #73
BuckRogers wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really shouldn’t assume anything in software or any complex system. I know this wouldn’t fly at my job, and I don’t work at Mozilla. This is basic testing. Normally this is the mark of a bad software engineer, but attempting to blame the platform you’re on for your lack of testing takes it a to a new low. Mistakes happen, admitting full incompetence that basic testing isn’t done is damning. This is not a good def…

Not sure what your job is, but in my job: - we implement a feature, test it thoroughly for functional and non-functional requirements - when we are happy, we release it I don't see myself being responsible for a third party software company coming along years later and introducing a bug in code that injects itself between my software and the operating system that users of the software I wrote happens to install at so…

Maybe you're not responsible, but if someone says "something changed in the OS and your previous method is now adding substantial overhead", you could either a) report the change to the OS and mitigate or b) report the change to the OS and ignore the problem for years. It sounds like Mozilla chose b, for whatever reason.

As a software developer, I've had to workaround many many bugs in OSs, especially when dealing with updates to Android. It's just part of the job.

Re: Microsoft fixes 5-year-old Defender bug, reducing Firefox-related CPU use by 75%

#92

Post by guestbest »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #49
chillstreem wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

doesn't this bug only manifest itself if one is using microsoft defender as their only security solution, and not a 3rd party AV/IS? if so, then the number of Firefox users in this calculation is much lower.

I don't know if that's the case. I'm a Firefox user but consider all the 3rd party apps nearly as much malware as the things they are trying to solve. I run strictly defender and try to make good choices when downloading and browsing.

I agree with this and try to practice myself. I download portablespps.com hoping they have a scanner and stick to the open source ones

Re: Microsoft fixes 5-year-old Defender bug, reducing Firefox-related CPU use by 75%

#93

Post by callesgg »

akira2501 wrote: post #78
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My car also nags me every time I unbuckle my seatbelt to park yet that doesn't mean everyone should have it unbuckled all the time. There's a reason it's designed to be naggy. Having everyone easily disable Windows Defender will not lead to a great outcome. There's a reason malware on Windows has been on a steep decline from the Windows XP days and I'd prefer it to keep it that way.

Not all uses cases for a car are the same. Some are held entirely on private property and are used as work vehicles where the seat belt chime would be unnecessary and distracting. Which is why most manufacturers provide a sneaky mechanism to disable it. I own the vehicle, why wouldn't they let me disable the nag? Their solution? Make it intentionally complicated, but still possible: Step 1: Turn your headlight switch…

Sounds like you are arguing that seatbelts do not increase the safety of its users when it is used on private property.

I know it’s not your main point. But anyways.. it does not increase the rhetorical power of your comment.

Re: Microsoft fixes 5-year-old Defender bug, reducing Firefox-related CPU use by 75%

#94

Post by rzzzt »

Culonavirus wrote: post #31
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #2

What apps other than Firefox might this have affected that badly (75% CPU usage)?

All of them? From IDEs through games to email clients. Remove that malware as soon as you can. Either replace it with some more competent antivirus (not sure there are any) or don't use any antivirus at all - as a visitor of this site you should generally know what you're doing and what is and what isn't safe. I use https://github.com/jbara2002/windows-defender-remover and have been running my Windows machines withou…

Eclipse and IDEA both have tickets dedicated to Defender's shenanigans: https://github.com/microsoft/java-wdb/issues/9

Re: Microsoft fixes 5-year-old Defender bug, reducing Firefox-related CPU use by 75%

#95

Post by [deleted] »

bogwog wrote: post #61
vntok wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it's the FireFox' team's responsibility to be aware of and take into account arbitrary software intercepting system calls. Per the bug report, Firefox was generating up to ~14,000 calls where Chrome was generating ~300, though. Surely it is Firefox' team's responsibility to use system calls in a sane way, say not almost 50x more than the competition?

> Surely it is Firefox' team's responsibility to use system calls in a sane way, say not almost 50x more than the competition? The docs for that function don't say anything about performance: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/memoryap... They also don't say anything about "sane" usage, and while I don't have an MBA, I'm pretty sure they don't teach anything about `VirtualProtect` ratios when doing c…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft fixes 5-year-old Defender bug, reducing Firefox-related CPU use by 75%

#97

Post by jonhohle »

arnaudsm wrote: post #40

Quick napkin math of the wasted power : Firefox has ~300e6 users, let's assume the bug wasted 5 extra watts 4 hours a day. That's 250 megawatts saved, the equivalent of an average coal power plant. Because some Microsoft engineer missed a bug.

I love calculations like this and hope they are part of every engineer’s line of thinking. I originally came across this thinking in Andy Hertzfeld’s book - https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt

Performance is time, energy, heat. It’s one of the easiest features to get and there are lots of tools, research, and philosophies to help get it. Memory and storage are similar.

For anyone working on large scale apps that are on millions of devices, hundreds of thousands of servers, or even just some back office guy who has minutes less stress in his day, performance benefits the world. For programmers, it’s one of the easiest ways to Save the Planet™.

Re: Microsoft fixes 5-year-old Defender bug, reducing Firefox-related CPU use by 75%

#98

Post by Neil44 »

chillstreem wrote: post #45
arnaudsm wrote: post #40

Quick napkin math of the wasted power : Firefox has ~300e6 users, let's assume the bug wasted 5 extra watts 4 hours a day. That's 250 megawatts saved, the equivalent of an average coal power plant. Because some Microsoft engineer missed a bug.

doesn't this bug only manifest itself if one is using microsoft defender as their only security solution, and not a 3rd party AV/IS? if so, then the number of Firefox users in this calculation is much lower.

More complicated still, defender does not completely stop working when 3rd party AV is installed. Also maybe Firefox is not the only app triggering this bug?

Re: Microsoft fixes 5-year-old Defender bug, reducing Firefox-related CPU use by 75%

#100

Post by sdfghswe »

arnaudsm wrote: post #40

Quick napkin math of the wasted power : Firefox has ~300e6 users, let's assume the bug wasted 5 extra watts 4 hours a day. That's 250 megawatts saved, the equivalent of an average coal power plant. Because some Microsoft engineer missed a bug.

> let's assume the bug wasted 5 extra watts 4 hours a day.

How did you come to this?

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