ID: IRCNE2012101647
Date: 2012-10-20
According to "techworld", Microsoft is taking a distinctly different - and likely far better - approach with Windows 8 to how anti-malware will run in comparison to earlier versions of Windows, according to ESET antivirus researcher Aryeh Goretsky.
Microsoft's approach, called "Early Launch Anti-Malware," basically means the first software driver to be loaded into the Windows 8 OS upon its use will be the driver of the user's anti-malware software. This is a major change because "before, it was a 'no-man's land'," says Goretsky, meaning loading driver software on the user's machine was random and "a malicious device driver" could get there first, allowing the malware to trump the anti-malware and maybe turn it off.
Microsoft has put in some protections to ensure that anti-malware from vendors that have gone through Microsoft's digital-signing review process will be loaded up first to check to see if a system is clean before continuing the boot process, says Goretsky. There is one wrinkle in all this in that Microsoft itself is shipping its own anti-malware software with Windows 8 called Windows Defender.
So unless the user has Windows Defender uninstalled, this will be the first antivirus software to load up.
There are other aspects of Windows 8 security to be appreciated, he points out. One big one is what's called the "Unified Extensible Firmware Interface" that requires digitally signed firmware to be used in booting up to prevent a rootkit from making it in. This secure boot process is supported through the UEFI industry standard. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has been a strong proponent of this secure-boot process.
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