Can Vista survive without firewall/AV?


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Hiya,

I'm not part of the beta program (unfortunately) but I am interested in knowing a bit more about Vista, specifically about whether we will actually need a firewall/antivirus due to Vista being so secure. It would help if we dont have Norton/Mcafee/Symantec scanning every file that's modified on our machine to check for a virus etc.

I know that somewhere there was an article that said "Windows XP is infected by a virus after x minutes from a clean install" and was wondering if anyone had tested this for Vista? Naturally there wont be any exploits out there atm, but as long as it is secure enough in the first place (i.e. doesn't suffer from the same problems as XP) I dont see any reason to have a firewall/av on the machine.

And yes I know a hardware firewall would solve a lot of problems, I have one myself :p

Also, is the Desktop unloader thing working? The one that unloads the desktop from memory while you're playing games? If so has anyone tested it fully? I'd personally love to free up the 200Mb that XP hogs that would make some games run smoother, rather than having to buy another stick of memory.

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I confirm that Vista really does not requiere antivirus, why? because have a strong security system built-in, u enter with few privilege, not full as a administrator, and IE is built-in with 256 bit encryption.

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What happened to this thread...? I went to lunch, and when I came back there was a whole extra 2 pages of pointless arguing.

The topic of this thread is will Windows Vista be secure without an AV or Firewall, not "Mac is crap" or "Windows is crap"

Back on topic people!

As I said earlier, it doesn't matter what you use as your operating system, I think it would be a bit silly to not optimise on security precautions, so think AV and Firewall. An open system is just asking for trouble, regardless of the OS.

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but back ontopic: i'm also using Vista beta1 and only using windows xp build in firewall and haven had any problems or viruses what so , so personally i dont need a antivirus.

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but back ontopic: i'm also using Vista beta1 and only using windows xp build in firewall and haven had any problems or viruses what so , so personally i dont need a antivirus.

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HAHAHA, just for fun, install one, free like AntiVir than scan your comp HAHAHA you'll be stunned and please post the log file.

Bah forget it, if you are infected you are prolly just going to edit the log to your advantage.

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<offtopic stuff snipped>

I don't think any computer system will ever be secure without a firewall whilst we are using some form of TCP/IP. Personally I use a hardware firewall and no software firewall, but a software firewall has several advantages over hardware firewalls (such as individuall application access control) as well as a few disadvantages (such as cpu and memory ussage). As far as viruses and worms, these can probably be eliminated, at least in the forms they appear today. But it will require computer users to start using their head. I personally don't use a virus scanner, or spyware scanner, as I'm fairly confident in the way I manage my online activities. Every once in a while I install PC-Cillin and Spybot and check my system, and I'm consistantly shown that my computer is free of viruses and spyware. MS are usually pretty good when it comes to patching security holes, so as long as your careful and sensible, you don't need memory resident programs constantly scanning your system.

To summarise, I don't think Vista will be secure enough to avoid user's stupidity.

Edited by fred666
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HAHAHA, just for fun, install one, free like AntiVir than scan your comp HAHAHA you'll be stunned and please post the log file.

Bah forget it, if you are infected you are prolly just going to edit the log to your advantage.

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no i will post a hounest log just for fun! but first i have to get to work see you in about 4 hours! will pm you!

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HAHAHA, just for fun, install one, free like AntiVir than scan your comp HAHAHA you'll be stunned and please post the log file.

Bah forget it, if you are infected you are prolly just going to edit the log to your advantage.

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I've been using the windows built-in fw for almost 4 months or so and didn't get infected with any virus. It's called common sense :rolleyes:

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for the record, my comp haven't got infected once with this year.

i do have avg with daily update. but that's the backup.

How many times u get infect depends on what kind site you visit everyday.

that takes leaving IE open at night out of the question though.

Firefox and no window update with avg does it all for me.

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I don't think any computer system will ever be secure without a firewall whilst we are using some form of TCP/IP.  Personally I use a hardware firewall and no software firewall, but a software firewall has several advantages over hardware firewalls (such as individuall application access control) as well as a few disadvantages (such as cpu and memory ussage).  As far as viruses and worms, these can probably be eliminated, at least in the forms they appear today.  But it will require computer users to start using their head.  I personally don't use a virus scanner, or spyware scanner, as I'm fairly confident in the way I manage my online activities.  Every once in a while I install PC-Cillin and Spybot and check my system, and I'm consistantly shown that my computer is free of viruses and spyware.  MS are usually pretty good when it comes to patching security holes, so as long as your careful and sensible, you don't need memory resident programs constantly scanning your system.

To summarise, I don't think Vista will be secure enough to avoid user's stupidity.

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Unfortunately, the reason we have firewalls/AVs is because of user stupidity. I personally have a firewall on my router (not sure how good it is), Sygate, McAfee and Firefox on my XP machine, but I dont go on any dodgy sites that may give me virus, and dont recieve any attachments other than from reliable sources. There are merely for precautions, but I'm starting to think that perhaps I dont need McAfee on there any more since all it does it take up memory.

If we assume that a particular user is NOT stupid i.e. doesn't download/click something stupid, then would it still be secure? I seem to remember that there are bots out there that search for insecure machines and try to take control of them (i.e. the "Windows XP becomes infected in x mins" in my initial post).

I would assume that there will be less and less of these as MS are fixing those bugs.

I guess I should have asked: if you installed Vista Beta 1 on a clean machine and left it online 24/7 for a week WITHOUT user intervention, would it be infected with a worm/virus/trojan etc.? I know that a clean install of the original XP would be infected very quickly.

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^ i've been running vista without a AV or firewall for last few days, done scans and no infections :D

Edit: Yet ;)

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[Thread Cleaned]

No less than 37 posts were removed.

Thirty Seven!

Do us all a favour and don't even mention other operating systems during this thread.

This thread is to talk about whether users will need a firewall and an anti-virus solution for Vista or whether it will be secure enough on its own.

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HAHA it's just funny when people claim you can't live without AV, I've been free of spyware and viruses for years and that's not thanks to powerful AV it's thanks to myself! It's nothing but scare tactics to scare the ones incapable to use an AV, unfortunatly the majority is incapable so these scare tactics are acceptable.

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Reading on the TechNet site, I see that the Vista firewall now supports both inbound and outbound filtering. (XP only filtered inbound...) Assuming that the firewall is configured properly, it may be enough as is. I'd like to point out though that firewalls do nothing to keep out viruses; they're there to prevent unauthorized connections to your PC. (The only exception to this are trojans that then attempt to download a virus, though smarter trojans will be written to lower the firewall beforehand.)

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Unfortunately, the reason we have firewalls/AVs is because of user stupidity. I personally have a firewall on my router (not sure how good it is), Sygate, McAfee and Firefox on my XP machine, but I dont go on any dodgy sites that may give me virus, and dont recieve any attachments other than from reliable sources. There are merely for precautions, but I'm starting to think that perhaps I dont need McAfee on there any more since all it does it take up memory.

If we assume that a particular user is NOT stupid i.e. doesn't download/click something stupid, then would it still be secure? I seem to remember that there are bots out there that search for insecure machines and try to take control of them (i.e. the "Windows XP becomes infected in x mins" in my initial post).

I would assume that there will be less and less of these as MS are fixing those bugs.

I guess I should have asked: if you installed Vista Beta 1 on a clean machine and left it online 24/7 for a week WITHOUT user intervention, would it be infected with a worm/virus/trojan etc.? I know that a clean install of the original XP would be infected very quickly.

I have to say I agree 100% with you :happy:

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I have tried different things on security of Vista like Buffer-overflow vulnerability and also trying other XP known vulnerability.....I have found that its way better than XP initially was and this is just beta.. Hope all the vulnerabilities and bugs are ironed out till then !!

But I really can't believe that Vista can b used without an AV or Firewall. Mayb u dont execute any mail attachments or do not download exe's. But then u can always be exploited using some vulnerability like blaster, or JPEG exploit etc....and u dont become a zombie for network jamming in DDOS...... So I think even if u have the best of common sense on the net, u can always get "virused"... So I think it is good to have an AV/Firewall...

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As I said in one of my earlier posts (it got deleted--- dont know why),

Microsoft have overhauled the security model they use, and in doing so have changed the way running processes are handled. Processes can be marked and segregated so that actual execution is in a secure environment, coupled with UAP this should severly reduce the chances of a virus being able to execute. But as always, its best to have a strong AV solution to hand should things get past this new countermeasure.

Im glad to hear that the Windows Firewall now supports outbound filtering (but that is the first ive heard of it), and who better to protect the underlying OS then the developer themselves?

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As I said in one of my earlier posts (it got deleted--- dont know why),

Microsoft have overhauled the security model they use, and in doing so have changed the way running processes are handled.  Processes can be marked and segregated so that actual execution is in a secure environment, coupled with UAP this should severly reduce the chances of a virus being able to execute.  But as always, its best to have a strong AV solution to hand should things get past this new countermeasure.

Im glad to hear that the Windows Firewall now supports outbound filtering (but that is the first ive heard of it), and who better to protect the underlying OS then the developer themselves?

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I agree. UAP I think is an excellent idea, because it prompts for credentials even for the local admin acccount (seems similar to the "super user" command in Linux/Unix) before something can install. The problem I predict in this however is the tendency for people to blow by warnings and click "yes" to everything that pops up on the screen out of fear of losing functionality. So even if a trojan was caught by UAP as it tried to install, I bet a great many users would just click "ok" since it seems to me that many wouldn't know what was happening. (A good beta suggestion would be for Microsoft to at least report in the dialog box what executable was trying to run, and if it was signed by software provider, similar to the IE 6 install boxes.) In these situtations, a good AV client would be able to identify these programs so that a user would know that is is a malicious program and not something they need to accomlish their tasks.

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Well, it's not a case of simply clicking 'Ok', UAP requires an administrator to actually enter their password to gain the higher level security token before anything can then proceed. But, you are right, you will probably find some users simply paste their passwords in to get through it as quickly as possible, and if thats the case, it's their own fault if things go downhill.

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