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Firefox engineers discover a Windows Defender bug that causes high CPU usage

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Re: Firefox engineers discover a Windows Defender bug that causes high CPU usage

#91

Post by olyjohn »

dylan604 wrote: post #40
jandrese wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have definitely noticed my laptop fans spinning up whenever I do Youtube on Firefox on Windows. I just figured the GPU acceleration was broken, but this makes sense. Certainly not the first time Windows Defender has consumed extraordinary amounts of system resources for simple tasks.

I've noticed that AWS Console will spin up the fans on my MBP running Firefox, specifically on the EC2 screen. None of the other Console screens spin up the fans like that. Viewing about:performance always shows the AWS tab running full tilt to the point I've jokingly assumed they're trying to spin up an instance via WASM ;-)

The "new" EC2 console is the biggest pile of crap.

Re: Firefox engineers discover a Windows Defender bug that causes high CPU usage

#92

Post by jldl805 »

crooked-v wrote: post #51
stkdump wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read that a number of times now, but I have trouble matching it to my perceptions. Can you point to a specific website where you notice that slowness and then describe what action is slower? (Initial load, clicking stuff, scrolling, etc.) Just as an example, loading jslinux.org for me in Firefox is about twice as fast than in Chrome. That might be a special case of course, because it is a very special type of wo…

Put 10,000 or so event handlers with their own DOM updates on a page. Chrome will run it smoothly (taking up a huge amount of RAM in the process), Firefox won't.

That's not a specific site though.

Re: Firefox engineers discover a Windows Defender bug that causes high CPU usage

#93

Post by olyjohn »

ravenstine wrote: post #46

Windows Defender is a long standing bug in the Windows operating system. ;) My impression is that its invention was for the sole purpose of eradicating the idea that Windows is insecure and prone to viruses, which explains why it can be overzealous and CPU hungry. I would only enable it for family members who don't know what they are doing. For some reason, I haven't needed any form of active virus scanning in someth…

Defender is designed to tick a box on enterprise security checklists. That is about all it really excels at. It keeps IT people happy because they don't have to deal with a third party for their shitty AV.

Re: Firefox engineers discover a Windows Defender bug that causes high CPU usage

#94

Post by squeaky-clean »

Dalewyn wrote: post #69
squeaky-clean wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who don't know what they are doing. I think this would describe the majority of computer users. And the majority of computer users are also using Windows. > I haven't needed any form of active virus scanning in something like 15 years Microsoft Defender antivirus was released alongside Windows 8 in 2012. And it's essentially a rewrite of Microsoft Security Essentials which came included starting with Vista. If you…

>Microsoft Defender antivirus was released alongside Windows 8 in 2012. And it's essentially a rewrite of Microsoft Security Essentials which came included starting with Vista. Not quite. Windows Defender was released together with Windows Vista, this was very rudimentary and only handled malware and spyware not unlike Malwarebytes, it did not handle viruses. Microsoft Security Essentials was released standalone some…

You're right I was wrong about MSE which was the Windows 7 era. But Windows Defender was released in 2005 and was a rebrand of Microsoft AntiSpyware, which itself was a rebrand of GIANT AntiSpyware.

The version of Windows Defender that came with Vista was a bit different and included realtime scanning when executables were run.

Re: Firefox engineers discover a Windows Defender bug that causes high CPU usage

#95

Post by olyjohn »

Dalewyn wrote: post #69
squeaky-clean wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who don't know what they are doing. I think this would describe the majority of computer users. And the majority of computer users are also using Windows. > I haven't needed any form of active virus scanning in something like 15 years Microsoft Defender antivirus was released alongside Windows 8 in 2012. And it's essentially a rewrite of Microsoft Security Essentials which came included starting with Vista. If you…

>Microsoft Defender antivirus was released alongside Windows 8 in 2012. And it's essentially a rewrite of Microsoft Security Essentials which came included starting with Vista. Not quite. Windows Defender was released together with Windows Vista, this was very rudimentary and only handled malware and spyware not unlike Malwarebytes, it did not handle viruses. Microsoft Security Essentials was released standalone some…

They bought out the best AV product on the market, and initially it was amazing. They even improved on it at first, but then it started aging into the turd they is now Defender.

Re: Firefox engineers discover a Windows Defender bug that causes high CPU usage

#96

Post by Narishma »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #41

Is Windows Defender even worth enabling? It eats up a lot of CPU. It doesn’t seem like much help in a default update enabled system where you are using a regular user account instead of an administrator account. In addition, anti-virus and real time scanning is itself potential surface area for an exploit (for example a few years back there was an exploit based on Norton antivirus email scanner).

I don't think you can disable it anymore in recent versions of Windows unless you install another AV software.

Re: Firefox engineers discover a Windows Defender bug that causes high CPU usage

#97

Post by uni_rule »

ravenstine wrote: post #46

Windows Defender is a long standing bug in the Windows operating system. ;) My impression is that its invention was for the sole purpose of eradicating the idea that Windows is insecure and prone to viruses, which explains why it can be overzealous and CPU hungry. I would only enable it for family members who don't know what they are doing. For some reason, I haven't needed any form of active virus scanning in someth…

It's decent enough in the past 8-10 years that I don't bother with much free antivirus on my own or others' machines in the current year. It's a far cry from the Windows XP / 7 era where it was fucking useless and people got Ransomware or Rogues pretending to be AV's every other Tuesday just from using google images. Nowadays it is simply adequate for most people.

At this point the only other antivirus I bother keeping an install of on my personal system is Malwarebytes free in case things really go tits up and I need to run it and rkill from safe mode.

Re: Firefox engineers discover a Windows Defender bug that causes high CPU usage

#98

Post by Karellen »

rascul wrote: post #53
marcodiego wrote: post #13

> a ~75% CPU usage reduction was noted when browsing YouTube in Firefox I wonder how many of the people who say "Firefox is significantly slower than chrome" are using windows... On my computer, Firefox IS slower than chrome but (with ad blockers enabled) by an insignificant amount. By still being "the last remaining mostly independent, maintained and reasonably popular browser" I'd prefer it to use over chrome even…

I just ran a test at https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.1/ Firefox scored 89.5 ±1.7 Chromium scored 87.3 ±2.9 I guess that means Firefox did faster for those tests. I don't use Chrome or Chromium based browsers in general so I don't know how they compare in "feel". I am on Linux.

79.3±0.92 for me in Epiphany/Gnome Web

Which is a lot better than I was expecting compared to Firefox/Chromium.

Re: Firefox engineers discover a Windows Defender bug that causes high CPU usage

#99

Post by zokier »

Narishma wrote: post #96
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #41

Is Windows Defender even worth enabling? It eats up a lot of CPU. It doesn’t seem like much help in a default update enabled system where you are using a regular user account instead of an administrator account. In addition, anti-virus and real time scanning is itself potential surface area for an exploit (for example a few years back there was an exploit based on Norton antivirus email scanner).

I don't think you can disable it anymore in recent versions of Windows unless you install another AV software.

Getting rid of Defender is one of the best reasons to buy 3rd party AV.

Re: Firefox engineers discover a Windows Defender bug that causes high CPU usage

#100

Post by qup »

lionkor wrote: post #65
thewataccount wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a misconception that you need to do something "stupid" to get a virus which is simply not the case. 0 days exist, and worms are still a thing (looking at you samba). A great example is Pytorch just recently had a supply chain attack, and installing the nightly version between December 25th and December 30th, 2022 - would result in your home directory getting uploaded including ssh keys. Chrome also just had a…

windows users will also happily "run as administrator", while a lot of linux users know not to do that in my experience

Yes, I have an absolutely pristine record and I have never, ever copy-pasted a script from the internet with sudo, or piped curl into bash because I'm lazy and I trust most github READMEs. Never.
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