However with the passage of time, researchers realized that instead of securing users, these softwares are actually harming users. “Out of the products we analysed, we found that all of them lower the level of security normally provided by current browsers, and often bring serious security vulnerabilities,” said one of the researchers Xavier de Carne de Carnavalet from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. “While a couple of fishy ad-related products were known to behave badly in the same set-up, it’s stunning to observe that products intended to bring security and safety to users can fail as badly,” Xavier said in an official statement. We have seen how antivirus programs proceed as gatekeepers, filtering dangerous or malicious content by analysing secure web pages before they are presented to the browsers. Browsers are supposed to check the certificate sent by the website and it has to verify that whether it has been provided by a genuine organisation, called a Certification Authority (CA). The study stated that security products can make the system “think” that they are themselves completely granted Certification Authority (CA) which ultimately lets them to dupe the browser into trusting any certificate provided by the products. Besides providing vital suggestions for daily computer users, the research also has the same suggestion for the companies making the software products themselves.
