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The problem is that simply receiving a text may count as "opening a sketchy file". You really can't expect every boomer pecking at a computer to know the ins and outs of security.
This is not to defend this particular software, but your view leaves out some things as well.
Bad example? If you're targeted with zero-days like Pegasus, an antivirus software is not going to stop it. In fact the standard defense for this sort of thing is what I've advocated - isolation of system components via sandboxing/virtualization. I'm not sure what your argument is.
AV can at least detect anomalous network traffic or unexpected processes, which is obviously not as good as preventing the infection in the first place but is still valuable.
In this case, the systems were sandboxed - FORCEDENTRY escaped the sandbox. Sandboxing isn't a magical technology without vulnerabilities.
Would antivirus have actually detected this infection? Ignoring the fact that phones don't usually run antivirus (because they employ sandboxing security measures), in the case of FORCEDENTRY, the exploit was discovered because Citizen Lab specifically examined the phone of an anonymous Saudi activist. They don't say what exactly led to the phone being examined by them, but I'm willing to bet that it exhibited signs of infection that any general-purpose antivirus like McAfee wouldn't have detected.
Yes, sandboxing technology can still be vulnerable, but antiviruses are not a better security practice than sandboxing. Moreover - since you brought up a targeted spyware attack - if you're being specifically targeted by nation-state actors aided by NSO Group, you need to up your security anyways. So your comment that
immediately after discussion of FORCEDENTRY confused me, because if your threat model includes zero-day attacks like FORCEDENTRY (for example, you're a political activist, journalist, or whistleblower), then yes, I do expect such a person to know the ins and outs of security. They should stay on top of their game, because their life literally depends on it. At that level of threat modeling, if you're genuinely worried about attacks from well-funded nation-states, then security is not something you can just ignore and expect to have taken care of for you.
It's not one or the other.
Bringing this up as an example was my mistake since it seems to have derailed the conversation.
There are plenty of vulnerabilities out there that are not zero days. There are plenty of systems out there that are vulnerable to such attacks. Not everything is patched as soon as the CVE is published and not every system is updated as soon as the patch is published. It's a simple fact of life that there is a time period between a vulnerability being disclosed and all systems being updated, even if those systems are enrolled in some kind of regular update scheme. Arguing against the need for at least detection and monitoring for threats because you have a lot of faith in sandboxing does not make sense.
Yes, you need to detect and monitor threats. But no, an antivirus is not the sole solution for doing so and I have doubts that an antivirus alone is an adequate solution for this task. I am not arguing against the need for detection and monitoring, and there are better ways to do detection and monitoring that don't come with the added attack surface of an antivirus.
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