Anti-virus program-free. Day 90.

[Popinski]

I mentioned long ago if Anti-virus programs were obsolete. I've noticed less and less people are using them because they take up start-up time and overall performance. I have been scanning with Malwarebytes once a week and cleaning my HD with CCleaner. My computer is running nice and clean.

So far so good!

 

[earlyre]

not obsolete at all.
I just wouldn't PAY for one, when so many good ones are free...

I used to use avast! but for some reason about the time i switched to win 7, i just went with Microsoft Security Essentials. It's free, made by the same folks that made the os, works like a champ.

then i had one bug that slipped past that, so i got the new version of Avast(still free) it nipped it in the bud. but that's just 1 of the 4 or 5 computers i "manage" for family/friends, the rest are running MS Security Essentials.
I also use Malware bytes anti-malware(free version) on all (fixed up my sis's comp more than a few times w/ that one..)
and Piriform's "CCleaner" Formerly known as C-r-a-p Cleaner, to clean out all the junk that can bog a pc down.

 

[Nick R]

I just use MSSE, because it's free, works perfectly, is lightweight, and easy to use.

 

[daves87rs]

I still use one...

I really liked AVG, but it really started bogging down the computer. Then it let a nasty virus through, and that was the end of that.


I've wanted to give Avast a try though...

 

[91344George]

One important tip about MSE. Remember that when left to its own devices (auto) it only updates about once every 24 hours or so, it can even be a bit more . IF YOU TEND TO VISIT NEW SITES A LOT OR POTENTIALLY QUESTIONABLE ONES make sure to manually update the definitions at least twice a day if not more. It will improve the capture rate of "in the wild" malware that may have only recently been released.

If you are a safer surfer and tend to return only to the same sites that are well known and correctly protected I would not worry about updating more than once a day.

Also a great resource for checking out the safety of many websites is Norton Safe Web. Simply type address of the site into the search engine and it will tell you the situation with regards to malware and potential other threads.

Here:

http://safeweb.norton.com/

 

[daves66nova]

http://safeweb.norton.com/report/show?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bobistheoilguy.com .JUST making sure,hahahahahah!!!!

 

[demarpaint]

Comodo user here, along with their firewall, both free and work great. I have Malwarebytes anti-malware and it never finds anything, yet Super Anti-Spyware finds lots of tracking cookies. All programs were free, I just don't understand all the hype surrounding Malwarebytes?

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

Originally Posted By: Popinski
I mentioned long ago if Anti-virus programs were obsolete. I've noticed less and less people are using them because they take up start-up time and overall performance.

You've noticed this... how?

If anything, virus scanners are more important than ever considering how many bugs are out there, how many different ways they propagate, and how many dumb users who will click on anything that pops up on the screen in front of them.

 

[TooManyWheels]

Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Comodo user here, along with their firewall, both free and work great. I have Malwarebytes anti-malware and it never finds anything, yet Super Anti-Spyware finds lots of tracking cookies. All programs were free, I just don't understand all the hype surrounding Malwarebytes?

Cookies and mal-ware are not the same thing. Cookies are just the result of using the internet - an annoyance at worst. Malware has destructive or damaging potential. MWB is good because it works, doesn't have a lot of missed malware or false positives, and can be made to work during an acute infection. It doesn't take a sophisticated program to locate cookies. It appears you've never experienced real trouble....

 

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: TooManyWheels
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Comodo user here, along with their firewall, both free and work great. I have Malwarebytes anti-malware and it never finds anything, yet Super Anti-Spyware finds lots of tracking cookies. All programs were free, I just don't understand all the hype surrounding Malwarebytes?

Cookies and mal-ware are not the same thing. Cookies are just the result of using the internet - an annoyance at worst. Malware has destructive or damaging potential. MWB is good because it works, and can be made to work during an acute infection. Obviously you haven't been in real trouble yet.


I guess not. Although Super Anti Spyware picked up a Trojan Horse which Malwarebytes missed. I do keep everything updated and scan regularly.

 

[OVERKILL]

I've found SAS to pick up a number of false-positives FWIW.

 

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
I've found SAS to pick up a number of false-positives FWIW.


I haven't noticed that but I have and do run both programs. SAS only found a Trojan Horse once though, which is why I questioned Malwarebytes. No disputing it has a large following, and hopefully I'll never need it.

 

[Mystic]

I like Microsoft Security Essentials but from what I have been able to find out I don't know if it is adequate. I prefer not taking chances and going with the best antivirus I can find. I like Kaspersky. And NOD32 seems to have improved and might be a good choice if somebody does not like Kaspersky. The same programs usually are at the top or near the top every year. PCWorld had AVTest check out programs and GData was number one, Norton number two, Bitdefender three, and Kaspersky four. GData seems to slow my computer down, and Bitdefender does also. I liked Norton for a while but it is still hard to get rid of it completely if you decide to remove it. Kaspersky and NOD32 will actually find stuff. Kaspersky found a component in Apple Quicktime that was not digitally signed. I don't know if it was a false positive or not but I blocked it. Quicktime still works. Could it be that that somebody managed to add something to Quicktime? The Russian Kaspersky just impresses me although I wish they had a program that was more compatible with 64 bit versions of Windows 7.

If you pick one of the top ranked programs I think you are better off. Some programs tend to be almost always near the bottom like McAffee, Norman, CA, Trustport, etc. Spending some money each year on a good antivirus program could save you a lot of money if you were attacked.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Mystic

If you pick one of the top ranked programs I think you are better off. Some programs tend to be almost always near the bottom like McAffee, Norman, CA, Trustport, etc. Spending some money each year on a good antivirus program could save you a lot of money if you were attacked.


+1

The "good" ones will even stop you from visiting malicious sites/known sources of infestation. I've seen this happen numerous times with NOD32. Made it well worth the price of our site license at the office.

 

[buickman50401]

Even some of the good ones will still let some of the nastier bookits/rootkits through.

I had to remove two that both cam from hijacked email accounts yesterday from our church's office computers.

One was System Check which is a fake AV type program. It in addition to other things, takes your start menu program shortcuts an moves them to a hidden directory. If you start the removal process without backing up the user profile you're out of luck.

The other was a variant of Popureb. Read up on that nasty little piece of kit. It hides in the MBR (masterboot record).

The computers bluescreened before even loading windows because popureb ties into a low level miniport driver.

Removal required:

1 boot from Mint CD or other live linux distro.
2 copy all user profile data to flash drive
3 boot from windows install cd, XP in this case
4 go into recovery console and run fixmbr and fixboot
5 boot to windows (not in safe mode)
6 run rkill
7 run Malwarebytes full scan, during the MWB scan MSE alerted and removed one threat
8 finish MWB scan, remove threats and reboot
9 full scan with Hitman Pro remove one more threat
10 reboot into recovery console from CD, run systemfile checker to repair apati.sys
11 reboot into recov console again and run chkdsk /r to fix errors from the MBR being messed up and repaired
12 scan usb drive on clean system to remove 6 threats hidden in the user profiles.
13 merge the user profiles on the flash drive to the repaired computer making sure to copy the start menu shortcuts from the hidden directories to the proper ones

 

[SrDriver]

Wife is a Windows user and is using Microsoft Security Essentials.

I am a Linux user and seldom boot into Windows.

While no operating system is perfect, there is less bad stuff running around in a Linux Environment.

Apple computers are becoming more popular and while they don't see the issues Windows users have there is some bad stuff too now that can infect them. Guess as they become even more popular we will see more attacks on that O/S?

 

[noah330]

I really liked AVG, but it really started bogging down the computer. Then it let a nasty virus through, and that was the end of that. So I switched to zenok Free Antivirus

 

[Rand]

Originally Posted By: buickman50401
Even some of the good ones will still let some of the nastier bookits/rootkits through.

I had to remove two that both cam from hijacked email accounts yesterday from our church's office computers.

One was System Check which is a fake AV type program. It in addition to other things, takes your start menu program shortcuts an moves them to a hidden directory. If you start the removal process without backing up the user profile you're out of luck.

The other was a variant of Popureb. Read up on that nasty little piece of kit. It hides in the MBR (masterboot record).

The computers bluescreened before even loading windows because popureb ties into a low level miniport driver.

Removal required:

1 boot from Mint CD or other live linux distro.
2 copy all user profile data to flash drive
3 boot from windows install cd, XP in this case
4 go into recovery console and run fixmbr and fixboot
5 boot to windows (not in safe mode)
6 run rkill
7 run Malwarebytes full scan, during the MWB scan MSE alerted and removed one threat
8 finish MWB scan, remove threats and reboot
9 full scan with Hitman Pro remove one more threat
10 reboot into recovery console from CD, run systemfile checker to repair apati.sys
11 reboot into recov console again and run chkdsk /r to fix errors from the MBR being messed up and repaired
12 scan usb drive on clean system to remove 6 threats hidden in the user profiles.
13 merge the user profiles on the flash drive to the repaired computer making sure to copy the start menu shortcuts from the hidden directories to the proper ones


That sounds like "GF's mom syndrome"
otherwise known as the person who couldnt say no to clicking OK. or on any popup.

shes so bad.. I have her save her stuff on a 8gb flash drive and I reimage it about once every couple monthes.

Thats with malwarebytes and NOD32.

Its also a terminally slow 2.53ghz celeron (p4 base) so I usually charge "Dinner" for services lol.

 

[Mystic]

I do think that in order for us today to really make a dent in malware there is a drastic need for improvement in behavioral detection. It seems like it should be possible to develop software that can detect attempts to install software deep into Windows operating systems, and attempts to change or alter the registry. Of course some software already can do these kinds of things but I think there is a need for huge improvement. There is still a need for signatures, but there is a greater need for behavioral detection.

I heard quite a while back that a scientist working for Microsoft had developed technology that could detect any hidden file on a computer. The mere fact that the file was hidden would give it away. That was quite a while ago and I wonder sometimes why it seems Microsoft has apparently done nothing with that technology. If the technology worked as well as it was supposed to no rootkit would ever be able to hide deep within Windows.

 

[buickman50401]

Originally Posted By: Rand
Originally Posted By: buickman50401
Even some of the good ones will still let some of the nastier bookits/rootkits through.

I had to remove two that both cam from hijacked email accounts yesterday from our church's office computers.

One was System Check which is a fake AV type program. It in addition to other things, takes your start menu program shortcuts an moves them to a hidden directory. If you start the removal process without backing up the user profile you're out of luck.

The other was a variant of Popureb. Read up on that nasty little piece of kit. It hides in the MBR (masterboot record).

The computers bluescreened before even loading windows because popureb ties into a low level miniport driver.

Removal required:

1 boot from Mint CD or other live linux distro.
2 copy all user profile data to flash drive
3 boot from windows install cd, XP in this case
4 go into recovery console and run fixmbr and fixboot
5 boot to windows (not in safe mode)
6 run rkill
7 run Malwarebytes full scan, during the MWB scan MSE alerted and removed one threat
8 finish MWB scan, remove threats and reboot
9 full scan with Hitman Pro remove one more threat
10 reboot into recovery console from CD, run systemfile checker to repair apati.sys
11 reboot into recov console again and run chkdsk /r to fix errors from the MBR being messed up and repaired
12 scan usb drive on clean system to remove 6 threats hidden in the user profiles.
13 merge the user profiles on the flash drive to the repaired computer making sure to copy the start menu shortcuts from the hidden directories to the proper ones


That sounds like "GF's mom syndrome"
otherwise known as the person who couldnt say no to clicking OK. or on any popup.

shes so bad.. I have her save her stuff on a 8gb flash drive and I reimage it about once every couple monthes.

Thats with malwarebytes and NOD32.

Its also a terminally slow 2.53ghz celeron (p4 base) so I usually charge "Dinner" for services lol.


I'm not sure of exactly the order of infection on the machines. From what I can tell the rookit got on there From a java script exploit. Then the rootkit then allowed the fake av to get on the system since the rootkit bypassesses a lot of security features being that it loads by hooking into a miniport driver at boot.