+- howtothings.co.uk (https://www.howtothings.co.uk)
+-- Forum: Computing (https://www.howtothings.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Forum: Hardware, Networking and Wireless (https://www.howtothings.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?fid=11)
+--- Thread: Intel has bought out McAfee, why bother? (/showthread.php?tid=335)
Intel has bought out McAfee, why bother? - Pack3t SynAck3r - 20-08-2010
So perhaps you heard about McAfee being bought out by Intel. Yes that same brilliant McAfee who earlier this year who can claim they had a period of perfect protection after an anti-virus update. Any Windows XP machine that received said update had no chance of becoming infected after the update. The update somehow ended up deeming svchost.exe a malicious file and decided the best course of action was to immediately reboot the computer so the file could be deleted. Of course when the computer rebooted it would not boot into windows because many critical system services are dependent upon svchost.exe. So it crashed at least 2 million machines in one fall swoop. These machines of course could not be infected if they could boot up. But I digress....
So Intel decides it is beneficial for them to purchase McAfee for 7.7 billion US dollars. Why? I think Intel has been drinking too much of the mainstream Kool-Aid. McAfee sucks, let's be honest. They are a big name....that is about it. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on advertising, money that could have been better used improving a product that is below average for protection and absolutely abhorrent when it comes to use of system resources. They use old style "definition-based" protection, as do most of the other mainstream companies. American business sense over history dictates if people keep buying your shit there is no need to change anything because the time and resources necessary to do so would take away from the bottom line. I am linking to an article that gives several possibilities as far as to what Intel has planned. I discount any plan to integrate crap software into Intel's hardware. I feel sorry for the engineers who are going to be asked to do so. Intel seems like they want to jump into the security game according to the article in a wide based "cloud sense." If they think that overpaying for a useless and non innovative security company is somehow going to magically enable them to do that......well I am just glad I am am an AMD man. Any thoughts? I know a few of you should have an opinion. If you have something serious to contribute then please feel free, if you are going to be a jack-ass then please refrain.
Article link:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/why-did-intel-buy-mcafee-for-77-billion/9347
RE: Intel has bought out McAfee, why bother? - Drumm - 20-08-2010
I believe Intel are interested in doing something with Malware protection on the hardware level.
http://gizmodo.com/5616890/intel-wants-to-sic-mcafee-on-malware-with-virus+fighting-chips
I think part of it may be to do with that rubbish a while ago, about viruses being spread through dodgy hardware (Not a hard drive, actual hardware) But, doing software exploits is much cheaper than doing hardware. This is pure speculation, read that Gizmodo link for a bit more information.
RE: Intel has bought out McAfee, why bother? - Pack3t SynAck3r - 20-08-2010
(20-08-2010, 04:15 PM)Drumm Wrote: I believe Intel are interested in doing something with Malware protection on the hardware level.
http://gizmodo.com/5616890/intel-wants-to-sic-mcafee-on-malware-with-virus+fighting-chips
I think part of it may be to do with that rubbish a while ago, about viruses being spread through dodgy hardware (Not a hard drive, actual hardware) But, doing software exploits is much cheaper than doing hardware. This is pure speculation, read that Gizmodo link for a bit more information.
Good article. I think you are exactly right with what Intel intends to do. It is an odd route to take though considering McAfee has no history dealing with hardware at all. All of the their products are software solutions. Software security is completely different than hardware security. Hardware security en tales stopping malicious activity by physically stopping/disallowing certain bit patterns. Software security is all code and algorithms, working via read/recognize/react. I fail to see how McAfee "big name/little innovation" is well suited for implementing hardware security. It will be interesting to see how much progress is made in this direction by them at least. It would not surprise me if this spawns AMD as well as the mobile phone ARM processor manufacturers to follow this trend. AMD has the notoriety over the years for making breakthroughs in design first i.e. first 64-bit processor, first FSB-less processor etc. I think we will start to see a machine code instruction set design overhaul soon on all processor platforms if they hope to start accomplishing the hardware security implementation.
The hardware viruses you speak of are firmware/BIOS rootkits. They are usually peripheral hardware that has reprogrammed or hacked to accomplish previously unintended routines/tasks. Although there have been instances of motherboard BIOS's being modded as well. The problem though is that these rootkist have to be designed for a specific make and model of hardware. They are no universal implementations of these. They are VERY dangerous if someone were to get infected, but generally physical access is necessary.
RE: Intel has bought out McAfee, why bother? - bigsharn - 21-08-2010
There's also the fact that the McAffee name is well-known, and Intel would love to start doing bundling offers to trick end-users into buying shit they don't need