> I hope you remember the option in BIOS called "Master Boot Record Protection".
Well you obviously don't remember it. This option was from the DOS era and would have done absolutely nothing for a protected mode OS like Windows since 9x much less NT.
> Precautions were taken, the worst case has been avoided and that's not an argument supporting not having any precautions.
The main precaution here is that operating systems stopped allowing unprivileged executables from writing to the boot sector. That's what made sector boot viruses disappear. That is my point, and anything else is élucubrations on your part. Sector boot viruses were most definitely not a common thing when SB appeared.
> Sure, as long as you can launch before the AV or perpetually keep it at bay without making noise.
What? Do you think the AV is going to let you write arbitrarily to the hard disk but apparently not do any other destructive/ malware action ? I don't know what type of operating system you are running, but most likely it will prevent writing to the boot sector to all unprivileged processes, AV or not. To overwrite the boot loader you literally would need to beat OS level security AND any potential AV, while for most malware payloads users worry bout you only need to beat the AV since the OS couldn't care less.
Well you obviously don't remember it. This option was from the DOS era and would have done absolutely nothing for a protected mode OS like Windows since 9x much less NT.
> Precautions were taken, the worst case has been avoided and that's not an argument supporting not having any precautions.
The main precaution here is that operating systems stopped allowing unprivileged executables from writing to the boot sector. That's what made sector boot viruses disappear. That is my point, and anything else is élucubrations on your part. Sector boot viruses were most definitely not a common thing when SB appeared.
> Sure, as long as you can launch before the AV or perpetually keep it at bay without making noise.
What? Do you think the AV is going to let you write arbitrarily to the hard disk but apparently not do any other destructive/ malware action ? I don't know what type of operating system you are running, but most likely it will prevent writing to the boot sector to all unprivileged processes, AV or not. To overwrite the boot loader you literally would need to beat OS level security AND any potential AV, while for most malware payloads users worry bout you only need to beat the AV since the OS couldn't care less.