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Ask Slashdot: Actual Best-in-Show For Free Anti Virus?

Posted by samzenpus on from the good-and-cheap dept.

First time accepted submitter paperclipman writes "I'm on the college student budget and want to make sure that my recent investment in an Acer laptop will last me a good long while. I like to think of myself as a reasonably competent CPU user so I'm no adventurous link-clicker, but I do download some music as a recent SoundCloud devotee. My Kaspersky antivirus will be expiring shortly and I don't particularly care to renew with that steep of a fee — any advice from fellow thrifts?"

22 of 515 comments (clear)

  1. Simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Windows: Microsoft Security Essentials, free if you have Microsoft Windows XP or higher, and it does work especially for the technical, not too adventerous link clicker. Gives you that extra layer of protection you seem to want for those 'oh shit' moments.

    1. Re:Simple by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 5, Informative

      I can second this, and I should also add that the functionality is built-in to Windows 8 as Windows Defender. Same functionality as MSE, just relabeled. The old Windows Defender is dead.

    2. Re:Simple by Nos. · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not only is it a reasonably good anti-malware tool, its the least intrusive one I've ever used, both as far as annoying popups and abusing system resources. My first download on any new Windows install.

    3. Re:Simple by snemarch · · Score: 4, Informative

      +1.

      I've had MSE detect & clean that one of the other free products (think it might have been Avast?) didn't catch - and MSE is no-nonsense, doesn't get in your way, haven't given me false positives (it does flag stuff like keygens though :)), and isn't too hard on system resources.

      Combine that with FireFox + AdBlockPlus + NoScript + Ghostery + Certificate Patrol and some common sense, and you should be pretty well off.

      --
      Coffee-driven development.
    4. Re:Simple by DJRumpy · · Score: 5, Informative

      I can second this. I've taken to using the MSE offering for family that are on Windows. Two simple reasons. I can flat out tell them to ignore any web prompts for 'free virus scans' and whatnot. Ignore any prompts to purchase virus scan 'updates', etc,

      It also removes the irritating ad-ware that Avast and AVG are pushing out lately. They are doing more and more prompts to 'upgrade' which is confusing to older family members. Considering you're a techy this is probably a non-issue, but I do find comfort in the fact that the MS offering isn't likely to quarantine key OS files as Avast and AVG have done multiple times over the last few years.

    5. Re:Simple by brokenin2 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yep.. I'm a big-ol M$ hater, and I can say that MSSE is a pretty decent product.. FIrst thing I put on everyone else's computer after I fail to convince them to run Linux..

    6. Re:Simple by Rashkae · · Score: 2, Informative

      Nix on that one. MS security essentials is the only anti-virus that did more damage than an actual Virus. With default settings, SE took it upon itself to delete an entire e-mail folder in thunderbird, silently and with no warning, because of a simple e-mail virus. Not quarantine, mind you, just outright delete.

    7. Re:Simple by GIL_Dude · · Score: 5, Informative

      Add to the items you list EMET - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29851. This is a free download from Microsoft that allows you to protect processes (such as IE and Java) from well known exploit techniques (such as heap spray, etc.). As an example, it protected against this latest IE zero day "execCommand Use After Free Vulnerability - CVE-2012-4969". We (large enterprise) had no worries at all about that vulnerability since we have EMET deployed and configured. Here's the MS02-063 bulletin - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms12-063. If you expand the execCommand node and look at the mitigations you'll see you would have been protected. Often times Adobe Flash bulletins mention that EMET was a mitigation for the plethora of vulnerabilities that Adobe Flash code contains.

    8. Re:Simple by Ritchie70 · · Score: 3, Informative

      My only qualm with MSE: My mother-in-law (and my wife's sister, who lived with the m-i-l) managed to impressively infect a Windows XP system that I had MSE installed on.

      So far as I could tell, something broke Windows updates, which in turn meant that MSE updates didn't flow, and the infestation ran wild... to the point that the computer was unusable.

      In my work experience, it's easy for Windows updates to break or be broken. It was nonfunctional on my work computer for the better part of a year before I reloaded it.

      This experience led me to believe that antivirus should have its own, hardened, secure, simple update path independent of Windows system management technologies.

      --
      The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
    9. Re:Simple by scubamage · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'd have to disagree. We used to use it on mammography workstations dealing with sets of 8 80+MB files per study with no problem. The files were regularly compiled into standard ISO's, and again, no issues. The same workstations could also be used to load JPG2000 Animation files (MR and CT scans) which sometimes contained 3-4000 images, and again, no issues (these were not lots of small images, rather several thousand full resolution images in a single file). We honestly had more issues with Nod32, plus it cost more. We ended up moving everyone off of Eset NOD32 over to MSSE because it was free with the windows license and worked just as well. Outside of work, I've regularly had several multi-gb files with no problems (including 10+GB virtual hard disk files).

    10. Re:Simple by teh+dave · · Score: 4, Informative

      MSE is not free: it is free for home users. Business may use only up to ten free licenses before they are required to upgrade to Forefront. If you're a business and using more than ten copies of MSE, you're breaching the license agreement.

      Source: the MSE download page

  2. Microsoft Security Essentials by jfdavis668 · · Score: 5, Informative

    For a free, Windows antivirus, it is hard to beat. Not the greatest, but it works and updates automatically from windows update.

    1. Re:Microsoft Security Essentials by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Keep in mind MSE is only free for organizations for under 10 people...

  3. Blasphemy by Diomedes01 · · Score: 5, Informative

    But if you're running Windows, you could actually do a lot worse than Microsoft Security Essentials...

    --
    "To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
  4. You want ad-blocking, not AV by mlts · · Score: 4, Informative

    One of the primary causes of malware is drive-by intrusion via compromised or unmaintained ad servers. Instead of worrying about free antivirus (which by definition rarely catches real 0-day threats), I'd get an ad blocker, or a utility like the paid version of Malwarebytes which blocks malicious website IPs.

    Block the IPs and what spits out the malware, don't bother playing whack-a-mole against the latest polymorphic stuff.

    As for antivirus, just go with MSE. It usually is in the middle of the pack, is lightweight, and the price is right.

  5. My favorite free one by UconnGuy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Avast. Used to use AVG, but Avast seems to work better.

  6. Avira or AVG by EvilGrin5000 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've always found

    AVG Free http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage
    or
    Avira Free http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus

    To be good free solutions.

    --
    A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. -- Groucho Marx
  7. Microsoft Security Essentials by ilsaloving · · Score: 3, Informative

    As others have stated, MSE does a very good job. It easily outclasses the other freebies, and most of the non-free ones as well. For example, I've seen it clean up machines that got infested while under AVG's watch.

    And it doesn't slow your machine down to a crawl, which is nice.

  8. Re:ClamWin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Unfortunately, also doesn't do any resident background protection, network monitoring or link scanning, which all major antivirus tools do nowadays. The only reason to put ClamWin on a Windows machine if it is running 2000 or earlier, which is about the only current AV that will run on those systems.

  9. AV-Comparatives.org by INowRegretThesePosts · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://av-comparatives.org/

    This tests a lot of antivirus and shows you their detection rate, false-positive rate, etc.

    I myself promote Avira Antivir, which is lightweight, does well on AV-Comparatives.org, and is gratis.

    Of course, the best solution is to install Ubuntu; if you choose it, I can give you free support over email.

    And remember: any Windows antivirus (even, to a lesser degree, Ubuntu) will only attenuate the problem. You are _not_ safe just because you have a good antivirus (or run Ubuntu). You _must_ take care: don't go to rogue sites, don't execute untrusted executables, don't use pirated software, etc.

    Good luck.

  10. Another advantage by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2, Informative

    Is that it updates itself via Windows update. So should it fail to get a virus database update internally, Windows update will fix it. If there's a new version, Windows update will get it. Very good for people who just don't want to mind after the program.

    That said, I think there are pay for solutions that are better (NOD32 is what I like) but if you want free, it works great.

  11. Best AV is almost as good as nothing at all by 3nails4aFalseProphet · · Score: 5, Informative

    The only thing AV provides is a false sense of security. With AV, you're waiting until AFTER an infection occurs and then HOPING the AV company you've chosen has A) seen the malware before, B) bothered to add a signature to their definitions list, and C) is actually capable of removing the virus.

    Better ideas: Turning on AppLocker & running most of the time as an unprivileged user. Check out OSSEC for use as a File Integrity Monitor and Host-based Intrusion Detection System. Disable unnecessary services, remove unnecessary programs, use an ad-blocker, a "default deny all" firewall policy and get a 3rd party patch manager to keep all your non-MS bits up to date. Secunia PSI is a free patch manager/vuln scanner for home use - there are others.

    For a detailed description of just how bad AV is at protecting systems, check out the following blog post at computer-forensics.sans.org:
    http://computer-forensics.sans.org/blog/2012/04/09/is-anti-virus-really-dead-a-real-world-simulation-created-for-forensic-data-yields-surprising-results

    --
    /*Insert boring sig here*/