AV products vulnerable to attack through Microsoft Aplication Verifier.

[system]

@avon post:23

Avast, statement attributed to Ondrej Vlcek, CTO and GM of consumer business: “We were alerted by Cybellum last year through our bug bounty program to a potential self-defense bypass exploit. We implemented the fix at the time of reporting and therefore can confirm that both the Avast and AVG 2017 products, launched earlier this year, are not vulnerable. It is important to note that the exploit requires administrator privileges to conduct the attack and once that's the case, there are numerous other ways to cause damage or modify the underlying operating system itself. Therefore, we rate the severity of this issue as "low" and Cybellum's emphasis on the risk of this exploit to be overstated.

https://www.scmagazine.com/microsoft-tool-exploit-doubleagent-can-turn-antivirus-software-into-your-worst-enemy/article/646173/

Should be aware, though, that in Windows 10 those logging in with their MS Account (the default) run as administrator at all times. While not difficult to set up, MS kind of hides the ability to use local accounts, and if somebody with a local standard (non-admin) account ever starts using their MS Account (which automatically changes the user account to administrator) its quite fiddly and time-consuming to reverse the process. So simply brushing off an issue because “if they’re admin they can do anything” is perhaps not realistic?