I just replied to a blog comment, and I thought that I post my reply here as well:

I think that I have good reasons to be “against Avast,” having published seven articles on them so far. The security issues alone are bad enough. But Avast abused their position to collect and sell users’ browsing profiles. After they were caught they claimed the data to be anonymized, they claimed to only sell aggregated data – and they continue lying to this day, despite there being conclusive evidence to the contrary. While the company has been bought, it’s still the same people in charge. This sort of undermines any trust in them for anything related to security.

As the security of antivirus software goes, I’m not very fond of any as the articles in the “antivirus” category of my blog show. With Kaspersky it wasn’t only the security issues but also how they handled them, pushing out half-hearted fixes only for these to be circumvented shortly afterwards. McAfee and BullGuard had massive security issues stemming from being careless about security and not following best practices.

I’ve found a critical security issue in Bitdefender’s solution as well, but with them I at least had the impression that they were trying. Unfortunately, that’s currently the bar in the antivirus industry – at least trying to make their product secure.

Security-wise, one good thing about Windows Defender is that it only needs to do one job. It doesn’t need all the extra functionality as a selling argument. It doesn’t need to be a banking browser, it doesn’t need to be a phishing protection, it only needs to be an antivirus solution. It can keep a very small attack surface compared to all those antivirus suites, and so it does (yes, I checked).

I've been saying that #windows is a #virus since the 90s, and people is starting to get it now.

In fact some fables and legends tell that #WindowsDefender was created with the sole purpose of having an antivirus software that did not detect Windows as a threat

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/08/a-patch-microsoft-spent-2-years-preparing-is-making-a-mess-for-some-linux-users/

"Der Administrator" - das bin offensichtlich *nicht* ich, hat eine Cloud-Überprüfung von irgend etwas auf meinem Computer angefordert. Ich erfahre nicht, welche Datei das war, was dabei herausgekommen ist und ob sie jetzt noch da ist oder gelöscht wurde. #WindowsDefender...

I have had this #virus PWS:HTML/Phish.QA detected by #WindowsDefender several times in the last few days on my laptop. I had the same virus show up on my desktop last year and #microsoft told me just ignore it when I called their help line. Their software doesn't seem to fix it or quarantine it when asked to. Have others seen this? Uneasy about just allowing it but it seems to be happening daily for the last week

Project of the day (day 19) 2023, Sunday, September 10th

#LinuxDefender : https://github.com/seanpm2001/Linux_Defender/

#Linux #Defender is an anti-virus for Linux, with a #WindowsDefender like #interface (which can be turned off when needed) it clears most common Linux desktop malware, but extends to also include #spyware and, depending on how strict you set it to be, it can block the installation of programs like Google Chrome, and other tracking software pieces (they are spyware) along with any #proprietary software.

It is written mostly in #Python with rule sets additionally being written in #YARA it is aimed at being ported to as many Linux distributions as possible. It is early in development, and is not functional yet.

"It took over 5 years, but Microsoft has finally fixed a bug that caused Windows Defender to drain CPU resources when Mozilla’s Firefox browser is active.

In 2018, Mozilla staff reported that #Windows10’s built-in malware-detection program caused CPU consumption to top 30%. "

5-Year-Old #WindowsDefender Bug That Caused #CPUSpikes on #Firefox Finally Fixed | #BugHunt #Browsers | PCMag

https://www.pcmag.com/news/5-year-old-windows-defender-bug-cpu-spikes-on-firefox-finally-fixed

Use nim compiled language to evade Windows Defender reverse shell detection

https://infosecwriteups.com/use-nim-compiled-language-to-evade-windows-defender-reverse-shell-detection-a9268b4a3b0e

Chrome, Defender, and Firefox 0-days linked to commercial IT firm in Spain - Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Google researchers said on Wedn... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=1901167 #windowsdefender #exploitseller #firefox #zeroday #biz&it #chrome

Google ties Spanish IT firm to 0-days exploiting Chrome, Defender, and Firefox

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1901167

#WindowsDefender #exploitseller #firefox #zeroday #Biz&IT #chrome