(malware) walk too loudly...

Well there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth :-)

http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/your-companys-apps-incompatible-windows-7-shim-them-says-microsoft-394

Microsoft has long created its own shims rather than making laborious bug fixes to Windows' oft-brittle code.

"If you walk too loudly down the hall near the [Windows] kernel developers, you'll break 20 to 30 apps," Jackson joked.