Antivurus 2008 Has Arrived

[dawman]

These guys suck.

Extortionware should be banned by law. They invade my privacy and have a pop up every 15 minutes with a list of bogus warnings.

Then if I buy their " Cure ", which they installed, all is good. Bull Puckey.

Funny how they have a little pic of a fine babe with a headset on and say that their customer service is rated high. She has a big smile and a mic monitor headset, but no support email.

These guys can suck my booty.

Check out the highlighted bogus viruses and trojan horses they list.

The Brittany Spears blow job jpeg.exe I can assure you I would love to see, but does not exist on this PC as I share it with my son.

This should be illegal.

[valis]

I agree that Spybot is an excellent tool.

I prefer ESET nod32 for antivirus, but it's non-free (I avoid the "Smart Security" version with the firewall included, just the antivirus). I like Nod32 because it's very efficient when left running, and hasn't ever generated a false positive for me (most of what it does is algorithmic rather than matching binary 'fingerprints'). For software firewall I think Comodo has done a great job lately.

Also I recommend CCleaner for the occasional sweep of your computer (just a utility, not antispyware or anything). Just keep an eye on what file associations might be removed by the registry cleaner, as many optional associations use strings that aren't easily resolved by registry cleaners (alternate methods of opening files etc).

[nightscope]

Try Avira for virus

Agreed

ns

[dawman]

I have Avira and Spybot already installed. This new virus has figured out those 2 freebies and worked around them, as I have auto scan configured for 24 hour repeats.

I have removed it and even deleted the folder in regedit, no Bueno.

Is there a way to see which files stored are the most recent so I can find it's bogus fp;der name and F3 the living hell out of it?

[braincell]

That's funny, they put Britney Spears on your computer and when you call them, Britney answers the phone!

I don't use anti-virus because for many years, whenever I check for viruses, I don't have one. One thing I can recommend is Haute Secure. It seems to do a really good job of blocking bad websites. It's free:

http://hautesecure.com/

[nightscope]

I have Avira and Spybot already installed. This new virus has figured out those 2 freebies and worked around them, as I have auto scan configured for 24 hour repeats.

I have removed it and even deleted the folder in regedit, no Bueno.

Is there a way to see which files stored are the most recent so I can find it's bogus fp;der name and F3 the living hell out of it?

It's unlikely this is a virus, Jimbo. It's probably a hijack. Something that has configured itself for startup time or on browser start.

Use hijackthis (free & totally kosher) to see exactly what is going on at startup, including browser hijacks, and disable them, with care.

http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US ... hijackthis

ns

[dawman]

Brotha' Man Nightscope To The Rescue !!!

It appears as though you were EXACTLY correct in the Hijack theory. The software " Hijack This " immediately scanned the registry and I found out how I got this.

Avira and SpyBot were doing thier job.

I had installed a new program from Apple for mobile device support and the new iPhone which I will use for a few months and give to Scope4live jr. 4 Christmas.

These scoundrels have attached their little extortionware.exe to be brought in with the installation of the next new program I installed. Very clever indeed.

You just don't know who to trust anymore. The repair service I use for all PC's for internet and graphic art are updated and fixed at their center, and even they tried to con me into a 120 USD repair claiming that 2 applications must be run seperately to clean this and could not be done from the home.

Your tip was excellent and saved me major troubles as I always download my devices and more recently 2GB sized files, where the chances of taking a virus to my DAW is possible............Sneaky Bastards.

I have a B4000 in the Purchase thread for 450 USD, if you are interested I will sell it to you for 400+ and carry the insurance costs, you would carry the shipping.

Otherwise a plain old ANKYU is in order..................ANKYU....ANKYUVARYMUSH.

[garyb]

3 programs are required to avoid 99.99999% of malware in my experience.

1. antivirus-i recommend Avira or AVG
2. Spybot Search and Destroy
3. Spywareblaster

[Mary Mungo]

I've not had any trouble with my system since I brought Microsoft Live One-Care, I find it powerful but also small and discrete

[garyb]

there's some spyware for you...

but M$ promised not to take advantage of the backdoors they put in your system...besides the NSA requires it!

[nightscope]

..................ANKYU....ANKYUVARYMUSH.

All part of the service, man!!

Thanks for the B4000 offer. However, I leave all serious organ grinding to the specialists. I have all the keyboard skills of a grey seal on valium.

hijackthis is cool. But must be used with care when rippin' out offenders so's not to rip out the good bits. Anyway, Alles Klar!!

BTW, I highly recommend film "Schultze Gets the Blues". http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388395/ Probably old news to some but I laughed out loud plenty. Slightly disenchanted German polka accordianist discovers cajun and...... Marvelous.

ns

[braincell]

You don't need any of these these if you use Haute Secure.

http://hautesecure.com/

3 programs are required to avoid 99.99999% of malware in my experience.

1. antivirus-i recommend Avira or AVG
2. Spybot Search and Destroy
3. Spywareblaster

[braincell]

It will block you from visiting that site. I can not say 100% of the time but it seems pretty damn comprehensive to me in my surfing.

[valis]

Firefox 3 will also block your access to a site that's been listed as suspicious by google and several other sources.

It's effective enough that when a friend of mine had his site blocked, he called me up asking for help because he'd been unable to access his own site using Firefox (he uses the Fireftp extension for ftp). He was asking for help fixing it because he thought it was mistakenly targeted by google and thought I'd know some way to get google to 'change his rating'.

"There's nothing there but a 1 line of text with my email surrounded by the simplest html tags" he said. "There's no way for my site to have anything else on it".

He thought google's crawling methods were the problem, but sure enough when I had him give me login access I checked and past the end html tag there was an injection attack. He had no idea how it had gotten there but Firefox3 sure did its job. Considering that his site exists almost nowhere from the perspective of a crawler (in terms of links to or from it) and that he'd been able to access the site 2 days prior (ie, not infected yet), Firefox 3 did its job.

[garyb]

the whole thing stinks of dogs to the herd...

[Neil B]

I use Panda Antivirus on my pc and have had no problems for years with it. It seems to catch everything and it's a good price.
On top of that I don't have my music pc attached to the net - I use this one next to it.

[garyb]

well, DUH.....

[valis]

The sources used for the malware detection are the same sources that everyone is using for the phishing detection, largely google but supported by other resources as well. Info on this is available but I haven't looked at it since the phishing & malware programs first started. I'd be less concerned about the companies involved gaming the results to their advantage than I would some individual (either inside the companies or a 3rd party "hacker") subverting it through an exploit or security hole at some point.

woooh thankfully FF3 warns you and does not totally inhibit access.
What concerns me a bit is that it uses 'sources' for assessing the website.
That could turn out to be a webcontrol by thouse who control the 'sources'.

[braincell]

Haute Secure uses a different method and furthermore it is much more effective at blocking bad sites than Firefox is. I know this because I use Firefox and Haute Secure. If you don't use Haute Secure, then you don't know what you are talking about.

[garyb]

internet2 will solve all these problems.

it will be substription like cable TV. you will have some 200 "approved" sites and everything else will cost extra, or so the plan goes....

thumbscan to get online so no more anonymous browsing.
no more phishing sites.
no more "malware"(vista is already malware )
no more "conspiracy" sites.
etc.