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--- antimalware_software [2025/08/28 15:00] – ultracomfy
+++ antimalware_software [2025/08/30 16:26] (current) – ultracomfy
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-Information Technology/Cybersecurity/ Antimalware
+<WRAP column right 18%>
+{{page>Templates:Secularization}}
+</WRAP>
+~~Title:Antimalware Software~~
+<WRAP centeralign>Information Technology/Cybersecurity/\\
+<fs xx-large>Antimalware</fs></WRAP>\\
-An antimalware program is a type of software used in the detection of and defense against malicious programs and exploits. Electronic devices can store all kinds of data, most importantly login credentials, financial information and personal information such as pictures, chats, and sensitive files about or from their bank, work, family or other private matters. This makes those devices valuable targets for either destruction, theft or holding them hostage. In some cases, it's not about the value of the files on the device, and more about the device itself - some attacks exploit them for cryptomining, botnetting and other nefarious activities where it is more about the devices resources as an independent machine, rather than anything specific //on// that machine.
+An antimalware program is a type of software used in the detection of and defense against malicious programs and exploits.
+Electronic devices can store all kinds of data, most importantly login credentials, financial information and personal information such as pictures, chats, and sensitive files about or from their bank, work, family or other private matters. This makes those devices valuable targets for either destruction, theft or holding them hostage. Sometimes it's not about the value of files on the device, but more about the device itself - some attacks exploit them for cryptomining, botnetting and other nefarious activities where it is more about the devices resources as an independent machine, rather than anything specific //on// that machine.
 Most commonly, this is done through software, which is then called "[[Malware]]" (Malicious Software). The defining feature of malware is that the actions it takes are unauthorized by the device owner, unwanted and generally destructive in one way or another, and it will typically not notify the user or give them a choice in the matter((Unlike stuff like kernel-level anticheat, which does notify you and which does give you a choice.)). Not all attacks are carried out with malware though, a lot of times this is a matter of exploiting bugs in (oftentimes outdated) software and gaining control over a machine that way. Keep your devices and software up-to-date. Other attacks are carried out by other machines on the network scanning for vulnerable devices or by a bad actor inserting themselves between the user and the internet.
-############################## How protection works\\
+====== How protection works ======
-################### 0 Basics\\
+===== 0. Basics =====
 In general, the objective of an antivirus is to (1) prevent malicious code from ever executing on your system in the first place or, failing that, to (2) terminate a process if it is deemed to be malicious.
-################### 1 Signature Detection\\
+===== 1. Signature Detection =====
-Files are identifiable. With fancy mathematics, any computer file can be broken down into a numerical value that, in most cases, is enough to identify identical files((No, it's a heuristic. The content of a file gets simplified down into a numerical string in a way that is extremely //lossy//. That's a one-way operation and cannot be reversed. Would be cool, though.)). A //signature//. The cool thing about being able to identify identical files is that all you need now is a list of files you already know are malicious. Once you have that, you can just compare that list against any computer of your choice and you'll be able to weed out all the malicious programs you already know are malicious, quickly and efficiently.
+Files are identifiable. With fancy mathematics, any computer file can be broken down into a numerical value that, in most cases, is enough to identify identical files. A //signature//. The cool thing about being able to identify identical files is that all you need now is a list of files you already know are malicious. Once you have that, you can just compare that list against any computer of your choice and you'll be able to weed out all the malicious programs you already know are malicious, quickly and efficiently.
 From here on, your life is simple. If someone gets infected, they call you and say "hey, we got infected by something, we don't know what", you find the source of the infection, you determine the signature of the file, add it to your list and with the next hourly "Intelligence Update" everyone using your product will be immunized to that particular sample.
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 Critics will harp on and on about "Zero-Days", with which they mean "malware that isn't yet detected" as if that was the only thing out there. Yes, undetected malware is a thing, but for the home user that signature list is still extremely valuable. You are much, //much// more likely to run into malware already in someone's signatures, as opposed to something unknown. But even then, signature-based detection is not the only way to defend against malware.
-################### 2 Static Analysis\\
+===== 2. Static Analysis =====
 Back to the start. We are an antivirus product. We are trying to protect the user from malicious code. The user is attempting to open a program. We stopped that attempt for now, because before we let a program execute we want to make sure that it is safe. So, the first thing we did was to run the program against our signatures. That test comes back negative. Well, cool, this means that we haven't already confirmed this program to be malicious - but that does not mean that it is //not// malicious. We only know that we don't already know about its maliciousness. What do we do now?
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 The advantage to this approach is that it can get a pretty good insight into what a program may do without loading it into memory yet. This is critical because conventional malware can remain dormant on disk without causing harm; it is when it is loaded into memory (be it through the user executing it, or because of a scheduled task or through an autorun entry) that it starts doing malicious things. Analysing software without loading it into memory lets us look at the program without worrying too much.
-################### 3 Sandboxing\\
+===== 3. Sandboxing =====
 In cybersecurity terms, a sandbox refers to a protected virtual environment segmented off from the rest of the system, filled with all the sand imaginable but, ultimately, constrained to the sandbox. The box part here is the important part, as it means that nothing from inside that box can get out. Critically, this means a sandboxed program cannot access your data. This makes it perfect as a testing ground - throw a software sample in there and let it do its thing. Observe its behavior. Does it do anything scary?
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 The cool thing about sandboxing, though, is that it too is able to independently identify malware, even if sample wasn't previously known.
-################### 4 Behavioral Detection\\
+===== 4. Behavioral Detection =====
 Behavioral detection is what truly distinguishes good products from terrible ones. It is, however, also the hardest to get right, if you get it working at all. Of course we as humans don't care about cybersecurity in terms of software or code. As a company, you don't want internal documents to be exfiltrated to a hacker group - what you want is a system that can stop //that//, not just "programs that look like they're evil". The malware sample used to do nefarious things is just that - a sample used to do nefarious things. What you care about is stopping the nefarious thing. If you understand this, Behavioral Detection is just for you.
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 The downside is that behavioral detection is //hard//. To understand which system operations exactly are //malicious// is already difficult enough for humans to agree on. Then putting that from words on paper into actual code, all the while working around the limitations and kinks of the operating system's own security measures... yeah, it's a pain. But - the ambition is there and some of the results are quite impressive. It is, like all other things, just yet another layer of protection, and all layers of protection have cracks and weaknesses. Seriously, as much as I am praising behavioral detection here, I am praising the //concept// of behavioral detection - actual implementations vary in quality and are often held back by serious capability restrictions or just plain poor quality - current behavioral detection products on the market are //not// to be relied upon. In fact, no one single product should ever be solely relied upon.
-############################## How protection doesn't work
+====== How protection doesn't work ======
-################### 1 Common Sense
+===== 1. Common Sense =====
 Common sense is the single most frequent advice that can be found on the internet. And it's true - human judgement can be a good and sometimes even the most effective layer of protection against threats of all kind. But.. who doesn't use common sense? I don't think most people would say that they are being irrational as they carry out an act that is irrational. Human judgement is prone to failure - that's why car accidents happen all the time. That's why most plane crashes happen. To say that you should primarily use common sense is to say that you should just drive better. Giving common sense as advice is to say "just don't make mistakes". Clearly, this is not how reality works.
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 Risk management, a proper science that would //never// even //think// about suggesting something as ridiculous as this, is about minimizing risks at every stage of the process - at the human level, sure, but also at the mechanical level. That's why 50% of the resources of product design go into researching how humans could possibly fuck up using the product, and then minimizing the ways in which it can happen in the first place or how to minimize the potential damage.
-And I haven't even talked about the things that are //outside// of your control. Supply chain attacks are one such thing, but other devices on your network are a thing as well. Do you trust your family to know what they're doing? Your partner? Your colleagues at work? Other students at school? Do you trust that the companies who write the software you are using have proper cybersecurity measures in place themselves? There is an obscene amount of attack vectors in the digital realm beyond the "download an executable and run it".
+And that still doesn’t cover risks beyond your control. Supply chain attacks, insecure devices on your network, careless family members, colleagues, or even vendors whose own security might be weak—all are threats you cannot fix with judgment alone. The digital landscape has countless entry points far beyond simply “not downloading shady files", and treating common sense as the primary defense ignores the true scale of the problem.
-################### 2 What not to rely on: Windows Defender?
-There is a pervasive myth that common sense plus Windows Defender are enough to keep you safe. Or that Windows Defender is as safe or safer than other products on the market. Now obviously, "safe" isn't a binary. It's not that you are either "safe" or "not safe", the only truth here is that different combinations of precautions lead to different levels of //risk//. But still, the idea is that Common Sense plus Windows Defender is enough for the risk to be "low enough" for these people.
-And... I don't know, maybe? Funnily enough, despite arguing against it, that particular combination //is// what I rely on((And even that only because I can't disable Defender without some drama from the operating system.)). How much risk is acceptable risk for you? Either way, the reason I don't like that claim is because Common Sense is terrible advice on its own and, for the longest time, Windows Defender was terrible advice as well.
-The truth is that the people who say "Common Sense + Defender" are the same people who, before Windows Defender was a thing, just said "Common Sense". So, for us this is about the merits of Defender itself, and here we need a bit of a reality check:
+===== 2. What not to rely on: Windows Defender? =====
+There is a pervasive myth that common sense plus Windows Defender are enough to keep you safe. Or that Windows Defender is as safe or safer than other products on the market. Obviously, "safe" isn't a binary. It's not that you are either "safe" or "not safe", the only truth here is that different combinations of precautions lead to different levels of //risk//. But still, the idea is that Common Sense plus Windows Defender is enough for the risk to be "low enough" for these people.
-For the longest time, Defender was a //terrible// cybersecurity product. Think about it - the easiest and cheapest way to do antimalware is to keep a list of files you know are malware. If you cannot do that, you have failed as an antimalware product. And... Defender was not able to do that. The most common and most infamous pieces of malware are signatures that absolutely //everyone// should have. A few years ago, in tests against even the most well known and infamous pieces of malware, Windows Defender was not able to pick up most of these. It's a test that every malware security product should ace 100% by default, before you're even considered for further examination. Sure, knowing recent samples and reacting quickly to malware that appeared just a few hours or even days ago is a different beast... but having signatures for malware older than 5 years that was so popular it even made international news headlines... that's the least we should be able to expect.
+Maybe. In fact, that’s the setup I personally rely on. But the problem is that common sense is empty advice and, for much of its history, Windows Defender was genuinely terrible. The people who say “Common Sense + Defender” today are the same people who once said “just common sense.” The only real shift is that now we’re debating Defender itself.
-In those old tests, Windows Defender would score around 40% to 60% detection rates (depending on the pool of samples chosen), which was already way behind Bitdefender and Kaspersky's 98% at the time. It was in those times that people already threw around the claim that Windows Defender is perfectly fine and that there is no reason to buy a different one. The people who said that had no clue in the slightest on what they were talking about. Again: profession of risk management, profession of cybersecurity - both are serious business, don't sully them with your ignorance.
+For years, Defender was a failure. The most basic job of antivirus is keeping a signature list of known malware. Any serious product should ace this by default. Defender didn’t. It consistently missed well-known, widely publicized malware, including samples that were years old. Tests showed detection rates around 40%-60%, while products like Kaspersky or Bitdefender hit 98%. Despite that, people insisted Defender was “good enough", indicative of a complete lack of understanding of risk management or cybersecurity.
-One annoying part about this now is that Defender has actually been catching up over the years. It now passes the well known and infamous malware test like any other respectable product, and even its general detection rate is beginning to get to where other products are and, frankly, should be. 95% I think? There or thereabouts. The annoying thing about this is that the people are still thinking in their wrong and simplistic ideas of how the world works. The started out being utterly wrong, but over time the facts have begun to shift into aligning with some of what they say. So, now their wrong calculation just happens to spit out the right result, but they're still fundamentally wrong.
+Now, Defender has improved. It finally catches the obvious malware, its detection rates have climbed to around 95%, and it’s become a passable baseline product. Ironically, this means that people who were wrong for years are now accidentally right, but for the wrong reasons. Their logic hasn’t improved - the facts just shifted closer to their narrative.
-The reality is that Defender, despite having caught up as a cheap antimalware product that has a register of signatures, doesn't have much else. The "scan" you can do with defender is still mostly a signature lookup, //not// static analysis. There is no sandboxing and barely any behavioral detection. There is some anti-ransomware with protected folders, which may or may not work. Beyond that, there are - to this day((August 28, 2025)) - massive, gaping security holes that you wouldn't believe until shown: A single shell command can set the entire PC as a scanning exception for Defender, a single shell command can just disable the Defender product as a whole or, if you want to be sneaky, you can just delete the Windows Defender definitions (the files that contain the signatures and other metrics it uses to detect malicious files) and render it utterly useless that way. Want more? Registry changes, Group Policy edits, the ways to defeat Windows Defender are so artistic they just do it for sport at this point. It does take a bit of sophistication and I'm sure Microsoft is working hard to fix those holes, so they'll closed any day now, but those things are out there.
+Even so, Defender still has major shortcomings. Its scanning is largely signature-based, with minimal static analysis and weak behavioral detection. There’s some anti-ransomware with protected folders, but reliability is questionable. Worse, it has glaring design flaws: A single shell command can disable it completely, delete its signature definition files, or set the whole PC as an exception. Registry tweaks and group policy edits can bypass it in seconds. These are not obscure attacks - they’re widely known in the cybersecurity community, and in some circles defeating Defender is treated like a sport. Microsoft is patching, but the holes remain.