For everyone else who was lost like me (mined from this comment section and some googling):
- AV: Anti-virus software
- Vess: Security, AV expert, loves AV
- Justin Schuh: Chrome dev (security-related), hates AV
- AV needs deep access to the OS, opening the door for attacks if managed poorly
- Deep OS access is often hacky (due to lack of APIs?), thus potentially unsafe
- Vess and Justin Schuh both have bad manners
Is this about right?
Also, how is AV a (direct) impediment to a shipping a safe browser? It seems to me that a browser should be mostly agnostic toward AV.
Edit: It seems like the problem is that AV tries to penetrate browsers in a similar hacky way as for the OS, resulting in similar issues.
TL;DR: AV tries to help by supervising browsers because they're allegedly not safe enough, but browsers think they're already safe and want AV to gtfo.
Edit 2: Are there any AVs that don't tamper with browsers at all? I've always been using Avast and switching off all browser-related features, but maybe there are better options.
- AV: Anti-virus software
- Vess: Security, AV expert, loves AV
- Justin Schuh: Chrome dev (security-related), hates AV
- AV needs deep access to the OS, opening the door for attacks if managed poorly
- Deep OS access is often hacky (due to lack of APIs?), thus potentially unsafe
- Vess and Justin Schuh both have bad manners
Is this about right?
Also, how is AV a (direct) impediment to a shipping a safe browser? It seems to me that a browser should be mostly agnostic toward AV.
Edit: It seems like the problem is that AV tries to penetrate browsers in a similar hacky way as for the OS, resulting in similar issues.
TL;DR: AV tries to help by supervising browsers because they're allegedly not safe enough, but browsers think they're already safe and want AV to gtfo.
Edit 2: Are there any AVs that don't tamper with browsers at all? I've always been using Avast and switching off all browser-related features, but maybe there are better options.