[Question] harmful tweakers = winutil

[Obegg]

Latest commit https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows/commit/e0f2b1f02592e35fc5083b81c7037de78c322bce added winutil to the list of harmful tweakers, my question is why or what exactly is harmful (maybe I can talk to the developer and change it?)

[farag2]

Hi. Sorry for the late reply. All because the so-called tweaker provides a feature to break Windows by removing (not disabling) Defender as a folder. Such stuff provides only by trojans. By this act he like says to his audience that this is normal, everyone can break Windows to make it vulnerable to all kinds of viruses (especially to low-skilled users). This is evil. For that winutil was marked as trojan and every Sophia Script user will be notified if they ran such things before because I'm tired of broken Windows after such tweakers which has the only thing to convey to users is that Windows is bad, it has to be "fixed", "optimized" and so on. But the only thing such tweakers provides is to remove poor Defender as TrustedInstaller and allow user to download a god forgotten app from its GUI.

[farag2]

https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil/blob/a2b12ae4b0bb8f58c9def3865cc8dff64279fbba/winutil.ps1#L2664

Such "scripts" is a cancer and should be blocked on any platform, regardless of being open-source or not.

[Obegg]

So the only issue is the feature to remove defender? nothing else? But I can argue that it's not part of the tweaks section, it's only a feature in MicroWin which allows you to edit .ISO file. While I do agree such feature should not exist, it doesn't mean the entirely of winutil is harmful.

[farag2]

Normal apps won't provide or even notice about such things. Of course if a developer respects his audience (he doesn't).

While I do agree such feature should not exist, it doesn't mean the entirely of winutil is harmful.

Agree until he will remove Defender installation. Until that, the is marked as a trojan.

And don't forget about disable Windows Update right in the app.

[Obegg]

Mmmh, I mean... asking him to remove the feature to disable Windows Update might seem impossible (I think he won't agree since I saw a few of his YouTube videos where he talked about disabling Windows Update except security updates, apparently he uses this feature to choose he will only receive security updates). I can argue and say that none of those features are recommended and even some has warnings on them, furthermore I can say that none of those features are activated automatically (without user interaction), the user has to manually select a specific feature and choose to execute it.

Does those arguments convince you?

[farag2]

I know his position regarding WU. I think that good apps do not provide harmful features regardless what's behind of them. Disabling WU is an evil.

I will stand my ground. :) Younneed to convince him, not me. At least I'm not willing to break users Windows. :cat:

[Obegg]

This is mission impossible, asking him to remove two of the features of his utility... Just to be clear - only those 2 features (Defender and Windows Update) are the issue?

[farag2]

I didn't make a whole code audit of his project, but that was enough for me to add him. So for now, yes, these are 2 only issues.