14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Live Onecare will add vulnerabilities and increase the attack surface of Windows Vista. Natalya Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Lab has taken an official position against Microsoft and has downplayed the role that the Redmond Company will play on the security market. In this context, one of Natalya Kaspersky's victims is Microsoft's OneCare.
According to Natalya Kaspersky, Microsoft's reputation precedes OneCare, and the Redmond Company is already synonymous with an insecure environment and with security loopholes. Moreover, the fact that OneCare delivers a low detention rate of 81.22% is "complemented" by Microsoft's slow response speed and the false positives returned by its security solutions.
But the one thing that Microsoft has going for it is the public perception that an inhouse security product will deliver the best protection for Windows Vista. Natalya Kaspersky calls this a misconception: "some believe that Microsoft solutions, such as OneCare, are more suitable for users than similar products from other vendors. Why? It is claimed that OneCare integrates better with the operating system. This is supposedly because OneCare utilizes undocumented possibilities in Vista, whereas independent vendors are unable to do this. In fact, this is a myth."
A myth because both OneCare and Microsoft security solutions and third party security products are build with equal access to the same libraries, functions and documentations. "The fact that Microsoft occasionally chooses to compete with its partners for a share of existing markets is another story. But from a technical point of view, Microsoft application developers and independent developers work under the same conditions," explained Natalya Kaspersky.
Additionally, Natalya Kaspersky is convinced that OneCare will feature the traditional volume of vulnerabilities that is synonymous with Microsoft's products and that, on top of this all, the AV solution will be in the focus of malware creators, thus increasing the attack surface of the operating system. "The loopholes in Windows and MS Office applications are due, above all, to extraordinary popularity - hackers across the world are going to hack programs used by the majority. Given this, I am afraid that Microsoft's new antivirus solutions may suffer the same fate; virus writers will create malware that is designed primarily to evade detection by OneCare," commented Natalya Kaspersky.