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Single point of failrule (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 5 months ago by nicknonya@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/196@lemmy.blahaj.zone

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[-] Technus@lemmy.zip 21 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Strictly speaking, it's not anti-virus software. It's not designed to prevent malicious software from running or remove it. It's just monitoring for behavior that looks malicious so it can notify the system administrator and they can take manual action.

Most of the actual proprietary value, ironically enough, is in data files like the one that broke it. Those specify the patterns of behavior that the software is looking for. The software itself just reads those files and looks at the things they tell it to. But that's where the bug was: in the code that reads the files.

[-] Hildegarde@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

I wouldn't call it a bug.

Any software running in kernel mode needs to be designed very carefully, because any error will crash the entire system.

The software is risky because it needs to run in kernel mode to monitor the entire system, but it also needs to run unsigned code to be up to date with new threats as they are discovered.

The software should have been designed to verify that the files are valid, before running them. Whatever sanity checks they might have done on the files, it clearly wasn't thorough enough.

From my reading, this wasn't an unforeseeable bug, but a known risk that was not properly designed around.