CORRECTION: This one didn’t play nice with others either
No matter if this was intentional or not, it’s bad for MS. If this is intentional, why would it want to piss off venders and — more importantly — customers like this? If this is unintentional, does that mean MS has become so incompetent that it can’t even test basic changes it makes in Windows? What does this say about Vista?
Recently introduced security measures by Microsoft will make it more difficult to integrate third-party security tools with Windows, according to a rival personal firewall firm.
Agnitum reckons that the introduction of Kernel Patch Protection by Microsoft will force independent security software vendors to adopt the same tactics as hackers in order to get their code to work.
Security researchers at Agnitum – best known for its Outpost personal firewall product – reached this conclusion after an analysis of Microsoft’s Kernel Patch Protection approach. The technology is designed to limit the exposure of Windows machine to rootkits, which are forms of malware that hide their presence on infected systems, by restricting access to low-level kernel functions.
But Agnitum thinks the approach is susceptible to reverse engineering attacks by skilled hackers, while preventing legitimate software developers from installing software at the kernel level, unless ISVs similarly reverse-engineer access to the OS kernel. Such an approach would make it more difficult to install and maintain independent security products on Windows, Agnitum argues. Hackers, by contrast, have no need to fret about compatibility issues.
Sheesh, we get ppl com,plaining that the kernel is too exposed, and then when MS ‘fixes’ this, we get more cries that its too secure.
What will it take to make these people happy?
For Microsoft to go bankrupt.
Took me awhile to get the picture. But they don’t play nice at all. The company sued when a house owner claimed they found the original recipe in their basement.
So Microsoft has made their kernal more secure, and thus has made security companies unhappy. Now as any software can be reversed engenered no matter how secure this software company is saying that that may happen. Rather than going to MSFT and saying. Hey MSFT we make this software for your OS, you have made your Kernal more secure and we cant hack it as easy to get our product to work correctly can you help us figure out how to get it to work. They went, UM By making things more secure they are making it harder for us, and also making there less need for us so, um yeah they hate us, and um someday someone is going to figure out how to reverse engener it so yeah it’s till, um you know unsecure but um we can’t protect you unless, um we hack it, so MSFT make your OS less securue or we may sue.
If it was easy for them to without going to MSFT to hack the kernal, then it would be easy for ANYONE to go hack the kernal. I am sure that MSFT has ways to aid legitmit security companies if they ask, just so they can cover their but in the EU.
Dang! Little when I posted the comment to the M$ Robotics post did I realize how accurate I was!
J/P=?
ya know?
That windows MADE holes in IE and WinOs, so that they could sell the ability to Advert, dont you??
thats PARt of the reson there’s always security patches. They keep moving some of the holesm and fixing the ones that GOT FOUND.
It cost $99 for the ActiveX and MS’s OK to do it per year.
NOW they wish to Block other companies from BLOCKING those holes, from bots, Virus, and BAD content we dont WANT from the net.(love to kill ActiveX)
That article is a joke… so many if’s, maybe, possibles, and so on. No real testing or evidence.
Basically its a security company trying to spread fear because it thinks its business model isn’t up to the job.
Apple is having its server software phone home [but just to check for updates?]
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301522
Intel is putting TPM 1.2 into its new dual-core chips:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1989032,00.asp
Everybody seemed to be up in arms about “Trusted Computing”, back in the day, but now we are nonchalantly strolling into it’s midst.
I’m curious to see how much access 3rd-party security “patches” have in a TPM’d machine.