After the First World War the French had an understandable fervent desire to avoid the catastrophic loss of life that had occurred during the conflict ad embarked upon the construction of a line of defensive forts and outposts designed to slow up any potential German invasion and inflict such damage to it while allowing the main French army to mobilise and arrive for the mopping up.

It was a huge construction effort and one that when it was completed was visited by dignitaries from across the world because it was such a display of military engineering and human ingenuity, it is still well worth seeing today if you happen to be close to one of the forts or “ouvrages” that have been restored.

These fortifications as a whole was called the Maginot Line named after the politician that oversaw the construction but who died before it was completed. For all of its impressiveness and power the whole construct proved to be a white elephant as when conflict did return to Europe in the form of World War Two the German Army simply went around the Line through the Ardennes and basically emasculated it. In the event only a few of the fortifications in the Maginot Line actually saw action and most surrendered without a fight when France capitulated.

As it happens a firm called Different Internet Experience Ltd (can be found at matousec.com) have basically performed the same emasculation of every single anti-virus product that exists for Windows today by demonstrating an attack that takes advantage of how the security software interacts with the Windows core or kernel. No antivirus package that has been tested so far is immune including all of the large name brands.

The attack has got a few limitations but the security doomsday clock has started ticking and it will not be long before the method of attack is combined with other infiltration techniques that already exist today to make it possible to launch a viable mass attack.

The problem for anti-virus vendors is that any mitigation to the attack must include a significant rewrite of their software and these are not to be undertaken lightly. The folks at Matsousec have indicated they have a solution but, understandably, they have not published the solution online.