[labelbabyjunior]

They kind of have to, though.

If malware exploits a privilege escalation vuln, what's the AV going to do about it when it's reduced to the software equivalent of a UK police officer? Observe and report? Stop or I'll say "stop" again?

AV requires great power, which requires great responsibility. The second part is what often eludes AV developers.

[EvanAnderson]

The OS should do the SYSTEM-level lifting and scanning processes and behavior analysis should run sandboxed as low priv processes. It would require a clearly defined API and I feel like MSFT was always reticent to commit, leaving AV manufacturers to create hacky nightmares.

[labelbabyjunior]

Well the OS should do nothing—remember MS was taken to court over that—but better privsep on the part of the AV, sure.

Technically, Defender can be replaced with 3rd party AV.

[bux93]

Windows has separate SeBackupPrivilege for backup software, so why not for AV?

[arcfour]

What would this privilege look like that is meaningfully different from SYSTEM while being properly protected from/able to deal with malware that has an LPE?

[formerly_proven]

“Because the remediation component requires SYSTEM, the entire AV needs to run as SYSTEM and we have to unpack malware in the kernel”