Stan Beer
Friday, 20 October 2006 14:35
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The two leading security vendors are up in arms, with market number two McAfee saying Microsoft has no intention of keeping publicly made promises to make two key changes to the Vista operating system so third party security vendors can compete. Meanwhile a Gartner analyst says that it will take Microsoft years to implement the changes requested anyway.
McAfee and Symantec, using European regulators as
their sounding board, have both demanded that Microsoft enable third
party security providers to disable its security center dashboard so
that they can replace it with their own interfaces. They have also
demanded that Microsoft provide them with access to the Vista 64-bit
operating system kernel, so that they can build their own systems to
protect it.
Microsoft has implemented a utility called Patchguard which locks up
the operating system kernel and prevents access to it, without
exception. The two leading security vendors insist that they need
access to the kernel in order to build hooks into the system which will
protect it from the inside out.
Microsoft has said publicly that it will accede to the requests.
However, McAfee says that, to date, Microsoft has only provided data
pertaining to the security center and that it will only prevent
Microsoft security alerts from appearing but not disable the dashboard.
No information regarding Patchguard nor access to the kernel has been
provided to date, according to the security vendors.
McAfee, through it lawyer, issued a statement yesterday saying that the
Microsoft has given little indication that it intends to live up to its
promises.
In any case, Gartner analyst Neil McDonald has published a research
note saying that the changes needed to be made to meet the security
vendors' demands will take years and not be available until
2008.