Security Adviser | Roger A. Grimes » Sophos AV trying to raise Vista scare to sell more product

December 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Sophos AV trying to raise Vista scare to sell more product

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Sophos incorrectly implies that Vista won't stop current viruses

Sophos recently published an article implying that today's malware can easily exploit Vista.

"Sophos experts note that on the launch date of Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, three of the top ten - including Stratio-Zip - are capable of bypassing the operating system's security defences (sic) and infecting users' PCs. The Vista-resistant malware - W32/Stratio-Zip, W32/Netsky-P and W32/MyDoom-O - comprise 39.7% of all malware currently circulating."

However, if you read further, the article says that Vista's Windows Mail, the new Windows email client that replaces Outlook Express, stops all the threats by default. Only if you use a non-Microsoft, third party, email client, is the threat allowed to execute on Vista. So by default, in Vista, the threats are prevented from running.

Now, while there might be a little news here, it isn't much. That viruses and worms can spread in Vista is a little newsworthy. But really it isn't. If I can convince you to run my malicious executable, it's always game over, regardless of your OS. You can be running Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD...but if you run my untrusted file meant to cause harm to your system, I can always bypass any defense you have. That's just the facts of life.

The real factoid is that the default software that comes with Vista DID STOP the threats that they ran against it, by default. I find that conclusion much more newsworthy.

Posted by Roger Grimes on December 3, 2006 06:39 AM

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