Symantec is still crying foul over Microsoft's decision to lock anti-virus vendors out of the Windows Vista kernel. Last week, McAfee has thrown down the gauntlet in its dispute with Microsoft's decision to lock down the core of their Vista operating system. The security software vendor has a full-page ad in today's Financial Times which berates Microsoft. Now, Symantec is going even further by saying that Microsoft needs to provide a "level playing field" for security vendors and give them equal access to the Vista kernel. "We want the same access to the operating system as their engineers and developers. Let us integrate - we can do a better job of integrating security than Microsoft can," said Jeremy Button of Symantec's security and data management group. While McAfee and Symantec aren't too happy about the current state of affairs with Windows Vista, Russian-based Kaspersky Labs has rushed to Microsoft's defense. "It would not make any sense for them (Microsoft) to stop working with other computer security companies because it would make their system more vulnerable to attacks," said Kaspersky Lab Chief Executive and co-founder Natalya Kaspersky. For those that want to take a deeper look at Kernel PatchGuard, you can take a look at this MSDN blog post:

There are many brand new security features in Windows Vista, but Kernel Patch Protection is actually not one of them. Kernel Patch Protection was first supported on x64 (AMD64 and Intel EMT64T) CPU architecture versions of Microsoft Windows including Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP1 and Windows XP Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. (Patch protection is currently not supported on x86 or ia64 architectures.) Though, as the use of 64-bit computers is increasing, Windows Vista users will end up benefiting most from this technology. Kernel Patch Protection monitors if key resources used by the kernel or kernel code itself has been modified. If the operating system detects an unauthorized patch of certain data structures or code it will initiate a shut down of the system.

Kernel Patch Protection does not prevent all viruses, rootkits, or other malware from attacking the operating system. It helps prevent one way to attack the system: patching kernel structures and code to manipulate kernel functionality. Protecting the integrity of the kernel is a fundamental steps in protecting the entire system from malicious attacks and from inadvertent reliability problems that result from patching.