Jeff,

No argument that the MS product may be difficult to attack through said methods, but the reason they built a CPU usage meter for later versions is that early versions brought many machines to their knees (with or without competing products being loaded on the same machines). Also users should be wary of the Spynet component and what it shares with Microsoft from your machine data. And finally the MS product didn't exactly bubble up to the top in product tests this year in detecting brand new malware, which is certainly the bane of many corporate InfoSec pros these days.
http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/docs/avc_beh_201207_en.pdf

Coming in 13th in a field of 17 products isn't anything to brag about after all.

Also no argument here in that Trend is also a resource hog. Nearly a decade ago I used to tout that product for being efficient, having excellent coverage, and for speedy turnaround with new signatures based on new malware submissions (in comparison to some other vendors that sometimes took days to provide analysis and protection signatures). Then they turned their AV product into a protection suite of desktop security products, which also took many machines to their knees. They fixed some of the early performance issues, but once a vendor gets a bad rep in corporate environments it's hard to re-establish trust.

-Vic

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey Walton" <noloader (at) gmail (dot) com [email concealed]>
To: "Vic Vandal" <vvandal (at) well (dot) com [email concealed]>
Cc: security-basics (at) securityfocus (dot) com [email concealed]
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2012 9:31:51 AM
Subject: Re: Malware detection

On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 12:31 AM, Vic Vandal <vvandal (at) well (dot) com [email concealed]> wrote:
> Quotes and responses:
>
> In closing, MS Security Essentials is not your best bet for identifying and defeating said malware.
>
Interestingly, Security Essentials has one of the better architectures
with respect to ipc and process counts. For example, MSSE generally
uses two processes (1 userland, 1 privileged) and has a minimal amount
of handles shared between the two). It makes it difficult to attack
the privileged component through userland via shared handles (Events,
Mutexes, File, etc).

Other AV, such as TrendMicro or McAfee, can have 8, 10, or 12
processes in a system, and handle sharing was like an orgy. We found
it very easy to attack privileged components through shared handles.
For example, we would accidentally shut down the firewall and update
service while testing the scanner.

packetstormsecurity.org/files/100564/Old-Dogs-and-New-Tricks.pdf

Jeff

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Savvy95 (at) gmail (dot) com [email concealed]
> To: security-basics (at) securityfocus (dot) com [email concealed]
> Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2012 6:50:44 AM
> Subject: Re: Re: Malware detection
>
> My 2 cents.....
>
> If you are not looking for a "large robust solution" and you have Windows, try a mixed solution of Microsoft Windows Security Essentials for servers and workstations to detect and eliminate,
>
> Windows inherent AppLocker for Windows 2008/Windows 7/Vista for whitelisting authorized apps.
>
> For Windows XP, try Microsoft SteadyState to "freeze" the machine configuration and any changes are automaticallly removed on reboot. Note: It's been discontinued since 2011 and support for XP will be too in the near future.
>
> I hope you don't have Windows 98/ME/NT/2000 in your environment as there is no hope for you. ;-)
>
> Security Essentials:http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5201
>
> Applocker (How to Guide): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd723686(v=WS.10).aspx
>
> SteadyState (search for the download) there is also a reference document for all settings in SteadyState here: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/springboard/archive/2010/09/27/stea
dy-state-for-windows-7.aspx
>
> You could use Microsoft System Center to what you want and more.
>
> Good Luck
>
> Glen Victor
> CISSP, ITIL, CEH, MCT
>

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