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#21
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Seriously, has anybody ever seen a serious virus problem in Windowswhen using AV protection?
Moshe wrote:
On Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:51:55 -0700 (PDT), RayLopez99 wrote: Seriously, has anybody seen--or even heard--of a serious virus (including rootkit or malware) problem in Windows when using commercial antivirus protection? Several of my correspondents have had their machines compromised by spyware/etc, happens about once every couple of months. Sign: e-mails with appropriated addresses and inappropriate content. _All_ of them had McAfee or Norton installed. Most of them even paid the yearly subscription (update) fee. My wife's machine was compromised about three years ago. We changed her e-mail address, and installed AVG, and then (after AVG became bloated and slow) Avira as primary protection. Also scan with MBAM, Spybot S&D, etc, about once a month, just in case. cheers, wolf k. |
#22
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Seriously, has anybody ever seen a serious virus problem inWindows when using AV protection?
On Mar 23, 5:28*pm, Moshe wrote:
On Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:51:55 -0700 (PDT), RayLopez99 wrote: Seriously, has anybody seen--or even heard--of a serious virus (including rootkit or malware) problem in Windows when using commercial antivirus protection? It happens all the time. Usually brought in from outside sources and when the person bypasses the checking. It's like everything else in the world, you can't prevent an idiot from circumventing the tools put in place to protect him. Moshe, your examples are fine, but they are not what I'm talking about. That's not a real example since the user deliberately circumvented safeguards to keep out the virus from their system. In other words, anybody can disable their AV software, or ignore repeated warnings, and "install" the virus on their system deliberately (or even 'accidentally' through negligence). That's not a true virus infection. RL |
#23
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Seriously, has anybody ever seen a serious virus problem in Windows when using AV protection?
RayLopez99 wrote:
On Mar 23, 11:11 am, peterwn wrote: On Mar 23, 8:51 pm, RayLopez99 wrote: Seriously, has anybody seen--or even heard--of a serious virus (including rootkit or malware) problem in Windows when using commercial antivirus protection? Yes. I had to clean up a Windows laptop last year despite things being kept up to date and AV installed. The AV was bloody hopeless at setecting it despite being kept up to date. OK fine. Outlier. One in a million I would reckon. Tell us what virus it was, as that info should not be confidential. Unless it was so obscure that only one user, your client, had it. Anybody else? RL Are you fer real? NO commercial AV product stops all viruses/malware. I doubt a month goes by where I'm not cleaning one nasty or another off of my Windows PC. And if its not mine, I'm doing about two a month from other people. And my PC has Kaspersky Internet Security, an I regularly run Malwarebytes, Superantispyware, Spybot and Crap Cleaner. And once a month it gets an additional scan with the GMER rootkit scanner. It depends entirely on what you use yer PC for, what websites you visit etc. -- SteveH |
#24
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Seriously, has anybody ever seen a serious virus problem in Windows when using AV protection?
My brothers home PC was hit by a hacked button on website that he visited
daily for a year or more. His WindowsXP SP3 was attacked by Ransomware that put a big blurb on the his desktop about needing some fictional antivirus and it trashed his Microsoft Office and some of his Windows stuff. I ran a full scan on his system with his Norton 360 and it fixed the Windows problem and desktop blurb but had to reinstall Office and a couple other programs trashed. It wasn't a Trojan or something Antivirus could stop since it ran when he hit link on a normally safe webpage and he didn't do something risky to do. His is the only system attacked like that I've personally seen; that is one threat that I've read about in a PC World Security Threats article. "RayLopez99" wrote in message ... Seriously, has anybody seen--or even heard--of a serious virus (including rootkit or malware) problem in Windows when using commercial antivirus protection? One of the claims of the Linux crowd is that such problems are legion. But talking so some of the people at alt.comp.anti-virus I get the impression such problems are rare. Who is more right? BTW, check out this PDF on AV softwa http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=htt...eAjzJKL ymkDA It compares 16 commercial programs, and finds Microsoft at #2, catching 60% of all viruses (Avanti is #1 at 70%). And we're taking about all viruses, some of which as so obscure I'm sure you'll never seen one in the wild... RL |
#25
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Seriously, has anybody ever seen a serious virus problem in Windows when using AV protection?
snip
How can you possibly be cleaning at least one nasty every month? We don't buy it. Name the last virus you cleaned up. RL That sounds outlandish to me too. Must be doing some things wrong. The only time I ever got a virus on one of my windows PCs was back when I had win3.11 and got some fonts off of a shareware CD. The version of Norton I had at the time found it and cleaned it fine. I have never had any of my personal PCs infected since. Of course I have run Linux since '98 on my primary workstation. Although, I always have some win PCs around as well and use windows at work. BB |
#26
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Seriously, has anybody ever seen a serious virus problem in Windows when using AV protection?
Peter Köhlmann wrote: RayLopez99 wrote: Seriously, has anybody seen--or even heard--of a serious virus (including rootkit or malware) problem in Windows when using commercial antivirus protection? Yes One of the claims of the Linux crowd is that such problems are legion. But talking so some of the people at alt.comp.anti-virus I get the impression such problems are rare. Who is more right? So the estimate that around 30% of all windows computers are infected is "rare problems" [snip] 30%? What an illogical conclusion from what was said. Are you a politician?? Same kind of logic they use. Buffalo |
#27
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Seriously, has anybody ever seen a serious virus problem in Windows when using AV protection?
Buffalo wrote:
Peter K�hlmann wrote: RayLopez99 wrote: Seriously, has anybody seen--or even heard--of a serious virus (including rootkit or malware) problem in Windows when using commercial antivirus protection? Yes One of the claims of the Linux crowd is that such problems are legion. But talking so some of the people at alt.comp.anti-virus I get the impression such problems are rare. Who is more right? So the estimate that around 30% of all windows computers are infected is "rare problems" [snip] 30%? What an illogical conclusion from what was said. It wasn't a conclusion from what was written in this thread Are you a politician?? Same kind of logic they use. Buffalo Are you a Mac user? Those tend to be extremely stupid. Or are you (even worse) a windows user? -- If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous. |
#28
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Seriously, has anybody ever seen a serious virus problem in Windowswhen using AV protection?
On 23/03/2010 07:51, RayLopez99 wrote:
Seriously, has anybody seen--or even heard--of a serious virus (including rootkit or malware) problem in Windows when using commercial antivirus protection? One of the claims of the Linux crowd is that such problems are legion. But talking so some of the people at alt.comp.anti-virus I get the impression such problems are rare. Who is more right? As someone who repairs a lot, I have. However, these have ended up installed as a result of the pillock at the keyboard ignoring all the warnings. -- Conor I'm not prejudiced. I hate everyone equally. |
#29
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Seriously, has anybody ever seen a serious virus problem inWindows when using AV protection?
On Mar 23, 3:51*am, RayLopez99 wrote:
Seriously, has anybody seen--or even heard--of a serious virus (including rootkit or malware) problem in Windows when using commercial antivirus protection? Bagel, Sky, and several others have variants that can disable actual virus checking and/or quarantine measures without letting the user know they have been disabled. Fixing things that have been corrupted this way can be very ugly. I've had at least a dozen viruses over the last 10 years that have been so difficult to remove or did such damage that I eventually had to re-image the hard drive. Remember, virus writers are ALWAYS one step ahead of the anti-virus writers. Most viruses don't get the resources to be blocked unless they've infected a significant number of computers already. Once the culprit has been identified, it may take weeks to figure out effective countermeasures. Once the countermeasures have been coded, it may take another 2-3 weeks to get it distributed via the automatic update systems, since many people don't update as often as they should. Meanwhile, the virus writers and script kiddies are deriving new mutations and variations, designed to avoid detection by the new counter-measures. One of the claims of the Linux crowd is that such problems are legion. *But talking so some of the people at alt.comp.anti-virus I get the impression such problems are rare. It depends on who you are talking to. As one antivirus vendor about another's product. There are roughly 250,000 new viruses released every year. These are the ones that got past kasparsky http://www.viruslist.com/en/analysis?pubid=204792067 http://www.virusbtn.com/index Who is more right? Obviously, an antivirus company is coing to do the best they can to minimize reports of successful attacks to computers protected by their software, and maximize reports of successful attacks to computers protected by the software of others. These days, many companies have taken a more comprehensive stance on security. For example, Norton 360 provides firewall, execution protection, anti-virus, anti-spyware, and update control management to try and keep the bad guys from coming in the front door, and to keep trojans from letting them in the back door, and to clean up the messes of any pets that make it inside. Unfortunately, the biggest trojans - IE and Outlook, cannot be disabled, and cannot be blocked. BTW, check out this PDF on AV softwahttp://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=htt...ives.org/image... It compares 16 commercial programs, and finds Microsoft at #2, catching 60% of all viruses (Avanti is #1 at 70%). *And we're taking about all viruses, some of which as so obscure I'm sure you'll never seen one in the wild... Since you like this source, here's another good report from them. http://www.av-comparatives.org/compo...17-reinstalled How often have you reinstalled (or rollback of image) windows due an infection in the last 12 months? never 2258 65.8% 1 time 479 13.9% 2 times 227 6.6% more than 4 times 194 5.6% 3 times 114 3.3% living with known infection 86 2.5% 4 times 76 2.2% So roughly 40 percent of all Windows users have had infections so bad that they had to , or should have, re-imaged their hard drive at least once a year. As for the other 65%, they probably didn't use their computers that much this year ;-) Either that, or Microsoft rallied about 2000 of their staunch supporters to select "never". RL |
#30
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Seriously, has anybody ever seen a serious virus problem inWindows when using AV protection?
On Mar 23, 6:45*pm, "Cyborg-HAF" wrote:
My brothers home PC was hit by a hacked button on website that he visited daily for a year or more. *His WindowsXP SP3 was attacked by Ransomware that put a big blurb on the his desktop about needing some fictional antivirus and it trashed his Microsoft Office and some of his Windows stuff. *I ran a full scan on his system with his Norton 360 and it fixed the Windows problem and desktop blurb but had to reinstall Office and a couple other programs trashed. *It wasn't a Trojan or something Antivirus could stop since it ran when he hit link on a normally safe webpage and he didn't do something risky to do. *His is the only system attacked like that I've personally seen; that is one threat that I've read about in a PC World Security Threats OK, fine, but essentially your brother accidentally installed a program he should not have had--kind of like those junk shareware programs that infect your registry and can never be removed, even after Uninstall (I have a few myself). But strictly speaking I would not call this a true virus or rootkit. And it could happen to somebody in Linux land (accidental installation of a program). Anybody else? So far nobody has proved a serious true virus infection has occurred on a Windows machine. RL |
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