Text 17121, 92 rader
Skriven 2007-03-16 13:23:32 av mike (1:379/45)
Ärende: Microsoft: OneCare should not have been rolled out
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From: mike <mike@barkto.com>


http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39286351,00.htm

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CeBIT: In an frank interview, Microsoft admits that its OneCare security
product should not have been released so quickly


Microsoft has said that its OneCare security suite has "a problem" with the
underlying antivirus code, and admitted that security is just "a little part of
Microsoft".

Speaking to ZDNet UK exclusively at the CeBIT show in Hanover, a senior manager
for the software giant said that its consumer security product is far from
perfect and that pieces are actually "missing".

OneCare has been dogged by controversy since its launch last May. Signs that
the software was not up to scratch came earlier this month when OneCare failed
to achieve certification in an independent test of security products. Shortly
before that, it emerged that the product did not sufficiently protect users of
Microsoft's Vista operating system against malware.


But the latest and most serious problems arose in March this year after the
product mistakenly quarantined and even deleted Outlook and Outlook Express
files for the second time.

Microsoft apologised for the problems and has issued an update that has now
been automatically pushed out to OneCare customers, to halt the false positive
identification as malware of Outlook .pst and Outlook Express .dbx files.

Asked about these problems, Arno Edelmann, Microsoft's European business
security product manager, told ZDNet UK on Thursday that the code itself has
pieces missing.

"Usually Microsoft doesn't develop products, we buy products. It's not a bad
product, but bits and pieces are missing," said Edelmann.

The problem lies with a core technology of OneCare, the GeCAD antivirus code,
and how it interacts with Microsoft mailservers. According to Edelmann, the
Microsoft updates and mailserver infrastructure do not harmonise.

"It's a problem with the updates, and it's a problem with the implementation,"
said Edelmann.

If mail is received from a server running Exchange 2007, users are unlikely to
encounter problems. However, if mail is received from servers running Exchange
2000 or 2003, the likelihood of quarantining is high, said Edelmann.

"OneCare is a new product — they shouldn't have rolled it out when they did,
but they're fixing the problems now," said Edelmann.

According to the security manager, security is only a small part of what
Microsoft does, suggesting it does not have as much security expertise as
established security vendors.

"Microsoft is not a security company. Security is important, but it's just a
little part of Microsoft," said Edelmann.

Security vendor Kaspersky said that it was not acceptable for two Microsoft
products — such as OneCare and Exchange 2007 — to be incompatible, especially
as Microsoft has market dominance.

"Microsoft, welcome to our business," said Eugene Kaspersky, the founder of the
company. "All in all it's a bad thing. It's not acceptable for Microsoft
products to do that. Microsoft dominates the market. If they do that it creates
a big noise, many affected people, and happy lawyers."

This is not the first time Microsoft has had a problem with OneCare and
Outlook. In January OneCare also erroneously quarantined Outlook files.
However, Kaspersky said that although the problems then and now were the same,
the cause of the problems in January was different.

"They fixed the first false positive, and now they have the next one," said
Kaspersky.

Kaspersky said that false positives are not just a problem for Microsoft, but
for the whole antivirus industry. He said that about 1 percent of Kaspersky
records were false positives, but they were almost totally stopped by the
company's test robots. He added, however, that sometimes false positives are
released by Kaspersky.

Microsoft purchased the Romanian GeCAD company in 2003.
===


  /m

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