Do you need Anti-Virus on your Media Center PC’s?
November 9, 2009 by Homeserver
Filed under Software, Windows Home Server, Windows Media Center
It’s a legitimate question don’t you think? My case in point. I have a Media Center Server that does nothing but record shows, serve extenders, and serve other Media Centers. Do I need to install an Anti-Virus/Anti-Spyware product on it? Well, I have Microsofts Security Essentials installed on it whether that is right or wrong.
Do you want the security scanners trying to scan every bit that is served up to your client PC’s? I don’t however, I do perform some mild downloading and surfing via remote desktop and at the console. I think that is a good case to have some sort of protection.
I could have also titled this post, Microsoft Security Essentials Detects it’s first Exploit. I’ve never seen it pop up before and was a bit stunned. Check out the following screen grab if you have never seen MSE do it’s thing.
How did I come about such an exploit you may ask? Downloading actor images, and meta data via the MetaBrowser utility! I never imagined I would run across an exploit in such a way but there is also a good chance that it’s just a false positive. I don’t blame MetaBrowser for it but should we be concerned? I would like to know what image it was trying to download but since I quarantined the image I can’t find it! I did send the file to MS as seen by the grabs below.
Here are more detail about the exploit. Leave me your thoughts.
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I wouldn’t take the risk – why would you? – I’m running MS Security Essentials on my Win7 Media Center as well. So far so good.
I’ve had this pop up multiple times before in a similar fashion. In my case, I was quickly scrolling through albums in the Zune software (my music is stored on my Home Server) and it was populating album art. I think it is a false positive as I’ve never heard of a virus in a jpeg before.
In any case, I do run MSE on all three of my clients, one of which is a HTPC. It’s so small and quiet that there’s really no reason not to.