Bitdefender Internet Security 2010
Hmmm…. where do I begin…. right…. I use Bitdefender Internet Security 2010 for my Windows PC. There has been a few occasions where I had to contact the support team over an issue that has been plaguing me for a while ever since, followed by copious amounts of uninstall/re-install a fresh build of Bitdefender I.S, and endless reboots….this is not an attack or a vendetta against them, I admire the job they are doing….so don’t get this in the wrong way, but I’d like to expose something about the Anitvirus vendors from a general perspective….The problem gets exacerbated when the PC gets under a heavy load that it actually does cause a D-O-S (Denial Of Service) attack on my own PC rendering it locked up and could not do anything to coax it out of its catatonic state of CPU and all networking activity gets killed i.e. no connectivity….
Antivirus/Firewall solutions as we all know of, ranging from McAfee, Symantec, Eset, Bitdefender, Bulldog, to name but a few, incorporate their own driver which gets ‘injected’ into the Windows kernel in order to filter out the bad packets coming in and outgoing packets of network data and trap them in the process. That is the essential factor in how it stops malware and trojans from sending out unsolicited network data to the script-kiddie/zombie server/botnet out there in the wild.
This driver resides in the Network stack, worst case of the outcome if the driver has not been properly tested, like, I mean, seriously tested, stress load tested, is it causes the kernel to get down on its knees and “weep like a crying madonna pleading for mercy“, well, its the latter that I’m having a problem with Bitdefender…. yeah for all the canned responses I get when I chat on-line to their technical support (which, fair dues to them) goes roughly like this
- Them: Hello, Welcome to Bitdefender Solutions, how can I help you?
- Them: Hi Tom, how are you?
- Me: Hi, I am great and you?
- Them: Am good thanks for asking. How can I help you?
- Me: I am having an issue with IS 2010.
- Them: Ok, What version?
- Me: ummm…. I.S. 2010
- Them: What system?
- Me: Windows XP
- Them: 32bit or 64bit
- Me: 32bit
- Them: Ok, now what is the nature of your issue?
- Me: Bitdefender’s tray icon has turned grey, and ceases to respond to user interaction
- Them: Are you running any other security software?
- Me: No
- Them: Please go to http://….. and here’s the diagnostic trouble-shooting tool…as you have a ticket open we will get back to you shortly…
- Me: Ummm…. but …. …..
That would be how a typical session goes…now I know, it sounds cliched, with those canned responses on a chat session, it does feel like talking to an AI program called Eliza…. 
So, what is exactly the problem? Bitdefender’s driver actually does indeed crash the system in such a way it takes…wait for it… 30 friggin minutes to shutdown the PC…. whoa! WTF…. come again? yeah 30 minutes to shutdown.
No fancy crash or Blue Screen (they seem to trap that pffft) or any “serious error messages” of any kind, nope, nada, zilch, squat…the kernel at least is “weeping like a bloody crying madonna” – ‘Oh I cannot go on, my memory is page-overflowed, am getting stack exceptions, my stacketh hath overflowed’….
Ultimately, at this stage Windows is well and truly hosed (well, temporarily that is until the next reboot, ETA…approximately 1 hour)… sigh… that is one pain I have to endure to get the machine responding again, sure I can move the mouse, the cursor spins about in an endless loop, programs refuse to respond to mouse-clicks, even my trusty ould SysInternals Process Explorer gets seized up… and just sit there twiddling my thumbs…
Now, I know Antivirus/Firewall solutions would try pin the blame on some flaky software instead of admitting that there is a fault with their driver that caused the system to keel over and inflict a deathly DOS attack on yourself…obviously time, economics, money etc come into play…. but wait…hey… things are about to get worse….
I have submitted emails via their ‘Contact us’ page on their website, now the sucky part is, this, I have screen-shots which I captured with my camera phone, and uploading it was a nightmare, why…. because my IP address is flagged up in their logs and thus I get ‘flagged as a spammer’ and refuses to upload the pictures or the page times-out…(one at a time – yeah, there’s a limit to what you can upload) even worse, there’s no actual email address to do it in one swell foop…nope… why? because they don’t want incoming emails, viruses etc to hit their end so only through their ‘Contact us’ page is the only way to get the message to them…
I have attempted to upload at least a dozen snap-shots each time, then I was getting back an automated reply from them announcing that the ticket number is assigned (at least a dozen ticket numbers….- one for each uploaded snap-shot!!)
Without further ado, here’s the snapshots in their order of display to illustrate the time it took for the machine that was DOS’d and hosed to shut-down and reboot….
Oops...time is 10:15
Cursor spinning forever
Time is now 10:19
Oooh look
Uhhh....
Uhhh.....
uhhh....almost 15 minutes later
Ooooh....first dialog to appear in what almost 15 minutes later
seccenter.exe - that's Bitdefender....
Still....
Gee whiz.....
Another dialog box... this time Bluetooth....
Now...
At last....but wait...
Saving your settings.... yeah....
Windows is shutting down...
After reboot, notice Bitdefender, second left after the clock time...
Ahhh that's better now....
So there ya have it, from 10:15 to 10:53, that’s over 40 minutes…wait that’s a record….
System back up and running normally…. I dread this to happen again!!!!
Bitdefender….do something about this! grrrr…..
UPDATE: Speak of the devil….Bitdefender is greyed out again…..just at the point after I posted this blog entry…@14:27….grrrr……..
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Virus/Malware | tommieb | 
July 21, 2010 2:23 pm
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By IP Network camera, July 27, 2010 @ 5:55 pm
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