Windows Chief Suggests Vista Won’t Need Antivirus
Author: Dave Lewis
Now, I have to laugh. I remember when Microsoft rolled out Windows 2000 they had a billboard across the street from my office that read “More Secure Than The Popemobile”. Um, yeah. How’d that work out? Then there is always my fav when Larry Ellison made his claims about the security of Oracle with the advertising campaign tag “Oracle9i. Unbreakable. Can’t break it. Can’t break in.” Um, yeah. Well, those who do not study history are destined to repeat it I’m afraid.
During a telephone conference with reporters yesterday, outgoing Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin, while touting the new security features of Windows Vista, which was released to manufacturing yesterday, told a reporter that the system’s new lockdown features are so capable and thorough that he was comfortable with his own seven-year-old son using Vista without antivirus software installed.
I would be a little wary of statements like this. It’s just asking for trouble when you wave a red flag in front of the nega-hacker set. As we have already seen with Joanna Rutkowska’s research, Vista is not as secure as Microsoft would like you to believe. I would like them to be right. It would certainly make my life easier. But, history has shown us that this is not the case.
After summarizing that past statement, Allchin continued, “Please don’t misunderstand me: This is an escalating situation. The hackers are getting smarter, there’s more at stake, and so there’s just no way for us to say that some perfection has been achieved. But I can say, knowing what I know now, I feel very confident.”
I hope he’s right.
Tags: Allchin, Vista, Vista Security, Antivirus, Malware, Virus
