Windows Defender

[orrieandruth]

I am not sure if AVAST control's windows defender or if it is a spywere but it shuts it down and the only way I can turn it back on is to go into regedit and change the settings. It will run after that but sometime after that it gets changed back and shuts down. Any help would be awesome

[CraigB]

If you are using Window 8 or 10 then Defender is disabled by Windows itself when it detects another anti virus is installed.

[orrieandruth]

Windows 7

[CraigB]

On Windows 7 you are better leaving Defender disabled, the early versions of Defender we're spyware only and pretty useless at it, Avast already has you better protected in that area making Defender pointless.

[polonus]

Hi orrieandruth and CraigB,

In an ideal and predictable world this all would ring true. Alas with irresponsible NSA spooks that sit on a gaping Windows hole (and therefore for Windows Defender also, the latest one was been silently patched by M$) we all and also all AV firms not in the know are endangered.

And there are no custodians to guide such irresponsible state actors  even to the point when it leaks to cybercriminals and patients bein to risk their lives in a UK hospital. 

So, yes, Windows Defender becomes disabled because of conflicts between two residential AV solutions, but there could be a moment where Windows Defender is being patched and the AV solutions are not yet.

NSA and Microsoft, that sit on such gaping security holes for a full 5 years and only close them, when they cannot longer hide them as "the proverbial manure hits the ventilator" when the secrets proliferate to cybercriminal forces, are to blame.

Therefore all security researchers should not sit on holes, vulnerabilities and exploits but share them to better protect the end-user,
but in the present day world where the good, the bad and the ugly intermingle, the factual situation is often completely different then we are being told or assume.

So at the outbreak od WannaCry only users with fully patched Windows systems (the March patch) were being protected, so we are not out of the woods here: https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2017/05/every_tom_dick_and.html

With the present inherently insecure infrastructure we all run risks, but apparently an overhaul is not in sight as it suits certain parties better not to. So keep this at the back of your mind allways and do not trust anything, until you checked it yourself. Alas a lot of people cannot fend for themselves in such respects.

Oh, well, and when will Microsoft at long last close the double extension flaw that has infested so many? I heard from someone at Wilders it would be near the end of August this year, but we are still waiting for this to happen for over a decade now! So people think they download a harmless document and actually they download an endangering executable file.

polonus (volunteer website security analyst and website error-hunter)