Windows 10: Windows 10 Defender's security

Hi,


I am not too sure under what category I should post this question or may be my opinion. I am always particular about security especially ensuring that my PC and data is safe from any threats like virus, malware, ransomware etc.


I try out a few things inside virtual machine to test how effective the protection is.


Windows 10 1903 defender has a built in ransomware protection called Controlled Access to Folders which is good and it works. The catch is that the Defender itself is vulnerable. I tested this in VM on Windows 10 1903.


There’s a malicious program floating around 'those' sites on the internet that claims that it can remove defender from Windows 10. I thought that Defender shall catch it but it did not. Even when real time protection was ON, I could easily run that malicious program and it removed defender completely from my Windows 10 and no restart was even needed.


If ransomware runs that code first then the so called ransomware protection of defender will be rendered useless.


I think Microsoft should strengthen their Defender security and prevent any unauthorized changes to its operations unless manually stopped by user who is physically present before a PC and thru GUI interface. One way is to implement password based access to very critical settings like that of defender. Don’t know if that can be feasible. I don’t know much about Windows 10 internals.


Kind regards.

:)

 

"Attestation" A new feature coming to Windows Defender in Windows 10

Tech Republic - Upcoming Windows Defender feature will tell you when security fails

This seems very promising. Microsoft is in the unique position to know what Windows should look like, even before Windows Update pushes out new changes. As long as MS can properly sync WD with WU changes AND this new features does not make any "noticeable" hit on system performance/resources, all without any false positives, this should be a big step forward for consumer security, and a blow to the bad guys - always a good thing.

Of course, there will likely be some hiccups the Windows/Microsoft/Windows Defender bashers will surely pounce on - regardless how extensive the Beta process is. But hopefully open and unbiased minds will prevail. After all, the goal is to stop the bad guys and if this gets us closer to that, that's a very good thing.

For more detailed information, see Introducing Windows Defender System Guard runtime attestation)

 

windows defender & security center services keep turning off


Are you running any other AV or did you have one running in the past? If you didn't use an uninstaller for the AV, then the remnants of it could be causing the problem. Normally any time you install an AV it disables Defender by default.

If you are getting any error codes please list those, that will be helpful in helping you.

As torre suggested, might be a good idea to do a reset or even a reinstall.

Reset Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

Windows 10 - Clean Install - Windows 10 Forums

There are also some suggestions listed here:

Unable to turn on Windows Defender in Windows 7 / 8 / 10

 

Windows Defender Security Center Won't Stay Open

Thanks @Hydrate! Followed Step 3 of Option 2 and rebooted ... problem solved!

I'll keep an eye on it for the next couple of days and if all stays good, I will mark this thread closed.