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Comment by Shank | Hacker News Reader

Obviously it wouldn't be easy to test on Linux, but it would be really interesting to see the results of fuzzing against Windows Defender. Seeing as it's the de facto AV packaged with Windows 8, and a lot of people use MSE on prior versions, imagine the attack surface area.

Then again, if Microsoft is competent in how they built their AV engine, it might be properly fuzzed already. With such a wide deployment, you'd certainly want to think so...

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"In an interview with Dennis Protection Labs, Holly Stewart, the senior program manager of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, said that Microsoft Security Essentials was just a “baseline” that’s designed to “always be on the bottom” of antivirus tests. She said Microsoft sees MSE as a first layer of protection and advises Windows users to use a third-party antivirus instead."

Huh... That is really not the vibe I get from their website[0].

>"There are a host of nasty intruders on the Internet including viruses, trojans, worms and spyware. Microsoft Security Essentials offers award-winning protection against these intruders without getting in your way."

To me that reads like MSE is really good at protecting your computer. Why should I as a consumer think that I need something else? They really need to message that better if that is indeed the case.

[0]: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security-essentia...

That website was probably written by professional marketers. Large companies usually don't let its engineers advertise to consumers (and that's effectively what MS is doing here).

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