[HN Gopher] Microsoft didn't sandbox Windows Defender, so I did ...
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       Microsoft didn't sandbox Windows Defender, so I did (2017)
        
       Author : LorenDB
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2024-10-07 18:56 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.trailofbits.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.trailofbits.com)
        
       | Eisenstein wrote:
       | Now please tell me how to remove Defender.
        
         | nyanpasu64 wrote:
         | I've gotten it to work on Windows 10 by booting into live Linux
         | and renaming the Windows Defender folder in Program Files. No
         | clue if it would work on 11.
        
           | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
           | I am surprised that ever worked. I was confident Win10 did
           | verification that system files were in place and matched a
           | hash or some other integrity mechanism.
        
         | IntelMiner wrote:
         | Removing core parts of Windows is not a good idea
        
         | MengerSponge wrote:
         | "Erase disk and install Ubuntu"
         | 
         | https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/install-ubuntu-desktop#6-type-o...
        
           | CoastalCoder wrote:
           | And then Clippy sneaks up behind you, and whispers menacingly
           | in your ear, "It looks like you're installing an operating
           | system."
        
         | xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote:
         | You can reliably disable it with Group Policy Editor. At least
         | on Win10, not sure about Win11.
        
         | andrewxdiamond wrote:
         | I have to ask what motivates that. Defender has been extremely
         | unproblematic and pretty good as far as MS software goes, for
         | my experience at least.
        
           | tredre3 wrote:
           | Defender slows down build times _significantly_.
           | 
           | You can set exclusions of course, but it does get tedious
           | because every time you have a new project you need to add
           | exclusions for its folder and the toolchain. Then every time
           | a toolchain is updated (eg .../gcc/11.5 changes to gcc/11.5.2
           | you have to enter the 20 new exe exclusions and of course
           | windows won't let you mass delete the old ones so it's
           | click->confirm->click->confirm x50).
           | 
           | I might not do it myself but I can see why someone would just
           | say "enough is enough".
        
             | felipelemos wrote:
             | HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
             | Defender\Exclusions\Paths
        
               | andyayers wrote:
               | Or https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-
               | endpoint/microsof...
               | 
               | (DevDrive + Defender's "performance mode")
        
             | gtsteve wrote:
             | You can use the powershell command Add-MPPreference
             | -ExclusionPath[0] and ship a script with your app if you
             | want. I do the same for Terraform providers - whenever a
             | new version comes out, for a time the process can be
             | randomly killed as I suppose a process that spawns a child
             | process that starts talking to lots of endpoints looks
             | somewhat suspicious.
             | 
             | [0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
             | us/powershell/module/defender...
        
           | Eisenstein wrote:
           | It adds a non trivial amount of time for each file access.
        
           | maccard wrote:
           | I see about a 100x slowdown on some applications[0] and IO
           | heavy operations with defender in win11. It's unbelieveable
           | how slow it is. I was a huge proponent of it in Win10, but
           | I'm finding it hard to do so now.
           | 
           | [0] The software I'm using does a scan over a few hundred
           | thousand files to read file headers. Without windows defender
           | it takes about 30 seconds, but with defender it takes about
           | 300.
        
         | efilife wrote:
         | I use a custom windows build with defender removed, you can
         | find them on any windows modding site
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Discussed at the time:
       | 
       |  _Microsoft didn't sandbox Windows Defender, so I did_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14909759 - Aug 2017 (43
       | comments)
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | So did Microsoft ever fix this?
       | 
       | Hostile code scanners need to _look_ at a lot, but they don 't
       | need permission to write much. If sandboxed that way, attacks
       | aimed at the code scanner don't do much.
        
       | seanw444 wrote:
       | I just sandbox Windows itself. My only complaint is that I can't
       | play some online games.
        
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       (page generated 2024-10-07 23:01 UTC)