Is antivirus installer using a security hole?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tony
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T

Tony

Hi All,

I am not saying who, in case I am wrong about my assumption, but
there is a corporate antivirus product out there for Windows
that goes out and finds all your network's windows clients
(except those with personal firewall installed). Then it installs
a "communications agent" that allows you to install its antivirus
on the windows client. The idea is that you do not have to
walk around to every computer and manually installing the client.

Something smells here. How can this be, unless the server
software is taking advantage of a security hole? And, if so,
is the server's software just one service pack or hot fix
away from having its little hack plugged?

And, can the bad guys take advantage of the same security
hole to install viruses? Am I missing something here?

--Tony
 
Tony said:
Hi All,

I am not saying who, in case I am wrong about my assumption, but
there is a corporate antivirus product out there for Windows
that goes out and finds all your network's windows clients
(except those with personal firewall installed). Then it installs
a "communications agent" that allows you to install its antivirus
on the windows client. The idea is that you do not have to
walk around to every computer and manually installing the client.

Something smells here. How can this be, unless the server
software is taking advantage of a security hole? And, if so,
is the server's software just one service pack or hot fix
away from having its little hack plugged?

And, can the bad guys take advantage of the same security
Click to expand...

Usually these installers require you to have the administrator password,
instead of hacking the computer, such as with McAfee antivirus. If they did
use a hack, that antivirus would stop working when the vulnerability was
patched, so that wouldn't be very bright. We can only guess how this
product actually works, because the specific product was not named. I doubt
there's any threat to your computer. Note also that these antivirus
companies make big bucks off of reporting vulnerabilities to vendors and
customers, so I doubt they would sit on such a vuln for very long.
 
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