AV-TEST - Jan/Feb 2014

[Virgorising]

I also use Malwarebytes Free version as backup and run a full scan now and then,you can never be too careful regardless of the AV you use.

:thumbsup:

 

[Virgorising]

Anti-Malware Premium protects XP machines for £23.74 per year" Wow what a bargain from Malwarebytes

Sorry, MBAM is excellent, integrity driven and continues to offer a fine free version. U think they are not entitled to some compensation after having invested in writing this???

 

[Virgorising]

I cleaned up a bunch of crapware when I got there, and one of the guys asked if I added ram to their machine cause it was running faster :^D I don't trust any of them to not get infected, and I'm deathly afraid of getting something like Cryptolocker on the machines. The boss is the worst. I'd like to transition him to GNU/Linux, but that's a ways down the road. I have more pressing projects, and need to do a bunch of testing. It doesn't help that no one knows what software they run, or how it works. They all use stuff I don't use, so I rely on them for good intel. I'd get more useful data from cats :^D

That I ended up being the go-to human to fix the systems of friends was serendipitous, but even in my little sampling I RELATE TO THE ABOVE.

And cats are very, very smart creatures. Almost all cats, after careful delving re detection rates, etc., run third party AVs and IS Suites.

This is why I have never had to disinfect the computer of even one cat.()

 

[Ketchup]

I've fixed a LOT of infected PC's that used MSE. I consider it worth exactly what it costs.

And I have fixed a lot of infected computers running McAfee and Norton. The main point is to browse the internet safely. If you don't, you probably should be buying whatever is #1, buy a new AV every time the #1 AV changes, and you can still most likely expect to be infected every now and then.

Example: my parents have MSE on all their non-mac computers, and it has been years since I have had them call me about a virus.

 

[Mushkins]

I've fixed a LOT of infected PC's that used MSE. I consider it worth exactly what it costs.

And i've fixed a LOT of infected PCs with Norton, Avira, AVG, Kaspersky, Symantec, etc. I consider all of them worth right about the same: a last line of defense against infections. They are not some magic band-aid that makes you immune to everything bad on the internet, they are a single part of an overall security strategy.

Zero Day infections are the absolute minority, exposure risk is *extremely* minimal unless you spend most of your browsing time on shady websites. They stop being Zero Day and all the major AV players have definitions for them anywhere from hours to a day or two afterwards tops. The majority of infections come from poor browsing habits and systems that fail to keep up with the latest OS and software updates that patch these exploits. It doesn't matter if your AV is rated #1 in the world or the worst AV ever made, if the user explicitly allows the malware to install on their PC because they're downloading all those phat new FREE aquarium screensavers, they're going to get infected.

 

[Mem]

And i've fixed a LOT of infected PCs with Norton, Avira, AVG, Kaspersky, Symantec, etc. I consider all of them worth right about the same: a last line of defense against infections. They are not some magic band-aid that makes you immune to everything bad on the internet, they are a single part of an overall security strategy.

Zero Day infections are the absolute minority, exposure risk is *extremely* minimal unless you spend most of your browsing time on shady websites. They stop being Zero Day and all the major AV players have definitions for them anywhere from hours to a day or two afterwards tops. The majority of infections come from poor browsing habits and systems that fail to keep up with the latest OS and software updates that patch these exploits. It doesn't matter if your AV is rated #1 in the world or the worst AV ever made, if the user explicitly allows the malware to install on their PC because they're downloading all those phat new FREE aquarium screensavers, they're going to get infected.

Problem is users are the weakest link,remember users spread and invent new ones all the time,AV companies etc have to react so are playing catchup in many ways,personally having common sense and as you stated keeping OS up to date and using the more secure ones(OS wise) plus many layers of good defence is the way to go,users however are always a unknown quantity.


One thing we all know,long as there are users around there will be malware and viruses hiding and ready to attack their next victim.

 

[quikah]

The #1 defense against an infection is user behavior. All the AV companies pretty much profit off lazy/dumb users. You can run without any AV and be fine if you practice safe habits. When was the last time your AV even caught/blocked anything? I know it has been YEARS for me (approaching a decade on my home systems).

 

[Virgorising]

The #1 defense against an infection is user behavior. All the AV companies pretty much profit off lazy/dumb users. You can run without any AV and be fine if you practice safe habits. When was the last time your AV even caught/blocked anything? I know it has been YEARS for me (approaching a decade on my home systems).

I beg to disagree; pls see screenie below. I am safe surfer, but my Norton IS blocks/precludes things all the time, attempted intrusions, etc. It logs EVERYTHING.

 

[quikah]

I am safe surfer, but my Norton IS blocks/precludes things all the time, attempted intrusions, etc. It logs EVERYTHING.

Based on your many other threads, I wonder.

You seem to have a misunderstanding of what that log is showing. It is Norton tamper prevention, pretty much Norton is preventing other programs from interfering with itself. At the bottom you launched Malwarebytes install. So you claim that is a virus? Probably Malwarebytes is trying to scan Norton files and Norton is blocking it.

 

[Virgorising]

You seem to have a misunderstanding of what that log is showing. It is Norton tamper prevention, pretty much Norton is preventing other programs from interfering with itself. At the bottom you launched Malwarebytes install. So you claim that is a virus? Probably Malwarebytes is trying to scan Norton files and Norton is blocking it.

I understand what the logs delineates. Your take re nothing of importance, it's all only Norton protecting itself....is wrong.

Tho external attempts at paralyzing AV apps and rendering them useless....are a known phenomenon.

I now make note of something you posted which appears in my email notification you seem to have chosen to delete from yr post:

"Why do you even need Malwarebytes when you have Norton already?"

Seriously?

Know that I am not about combat or adversarial stuff. In basketball, yes. Otherwise....for me, toxic. It's even toxic for Phil Jackson. Which is why we dug him out and paid him 60M to raise our franchise from the dead.

 

[sweenish]

The #1 defense against an infection is user behavior. All the AV companies pretty much profit off lazy/dumb users. You can run without any AV and be fine if you practice safe habits. When was the last time your AV even caught/blocked anything? I know it has been YEARS for me (approaching a decade on my home systems).

I mostly agree with this, but I still remember having to keep an offline copy of the sasser worm patch because XP would get hit as soon as it got online.

Thanks to MSE, pretty much all AV suites worth discussing are light on resources these days, so it's not much of a hassle to keep a good free one going.

But it's true, I've not gotten a pop-up in a very long time.

 

[rgldsmth]

The #1 defense against an infection is user behavior. All the AV companies pretty much profit off lazy/dumb users. You can run without any AV and be fine if you practice safe habits. When was the last time your AV even caught/blocked anything? I know it has been YEARS for me (approaching a decade on my home systems).

Absofriggenlootly I made up a word...........

Anyway I am starting to really like webroot secure anywhere endpoint protection....go figure

 

[code65536]

The #1 defense against an infection is user behavior. All the AV companies pretty much profit off lazy/dumb users. You can run without any AV and be fine if you practice safe habits. When was the last time your AV even caught/blocked anything? I know it has been YEARS for me (approaching a decade on my home systems).

Yes! A voice of reason!

I'm going to copy-and-paste one of my old posts:

You are asking for trouble browsing the net without AV software.

That's rubbish. This is a far better analogy: AV software is, at best, a seat belt in a head-on car crash, and at worst, AV is a placebo that makes people feel invincible so that they drive in a way that results in many more head-on car crashes.

[rant] Have I encountered malware? Sure, countless times. Have I had drive-by downloads and other attempts to surreptitiously install things on my system? Yes. Do I browse porn sites and other high-risk places? Yes to that, too. Do I use AV? Hell no. How many times have I been compromised, infected, etc. in all my years of computing (over 20 years)? Zero. And of all the numerous systems that I've had to manually disinfect and clean for other people, how many of them had some sort of AV software installed? Every single one.

If people know what they're doing, they'll find that the cards are actually stacked pretty high in their favor. The problem is, instead of the hard work of educating users in basic computing (leaving people who think that "hacking" is like what happens in a Hollywood movie), people try for the easy solution of cooking up a technical solution in the form of AV, which ultimately does a disservice by leaving people ignorant without actually offering any real protection. [/rant]

AV is no better than airport security. It causes headaches for people, catches tons of false positives, and does a pretty crappy job of catching the really bad stuff (esp. since it's standard practice now for black hats to test their new malware against the latest AV to make sure that it all flies under the radar, which means you need to wait for AV companies to find, analyze and update signatures, by which time, it could be too late). Just. Stop. Seriously. Stop supporting this snake oil industry.

BTW, in the case of Sasser, that security hole was patched months before the worm was introduced, so it only affected people who didn't use patch or who clean-installed XP RTM/SP1 and connected to a network containing other infected computers before installing the patch. So even Sasser, the worst in modern computing (in the decade since Sasser, there hasn't been anything quite as bad--Conficker would probably be a distant runner-up), had plenty of mitigations.

 

[nemesismk2]

Sorry, MBAM is excellent, integrity driven and continues to offer a fine free version. U think they are not entitled to some compensation after having invested in writing this???

what is MBAM?

 

[ArisVer]

Malwarebytes

 

[lxskllr]

Comodo also offers a FREE AV/ Internet Security for Corporate

I finally got around to trying this. Horrible program. While it's running, you can't do much of anything else. It's like McAfee on steroids, and I don't mean that in any good sense whatsoever. It tries to install crapware, and you have to go into advanced settings to turn that off. Not a big deal for people who read, but I could never recommend this for people to just download and run.

Default install gives a useless desktop widget, and it thrashes the file system. It's like they read a guide on modern horrible software development, and incorporated every technique described.

I'd rather run an abacus than a computer with this crap installed.