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Ask Slashdot: Best Anti-Virus Software In 2015? Free Or Paid?
CryoKeen writes: I got a new laptop recently after trading in my old laptop for store credit. While I was waiting to check out, the sales guy just handed me some random antivirus software (Trend Micro) that was included with the purchase. I don't think he or I realized at the time that the CD/DVD he gave me would not work because my new laptop does not have a CD/DVD player.
Anyway, it got me wondering whether I should use it or not. Would I be better off downloading something like Avast or Malwarebytes? Is there one piece of antivirus software that's significantly better than the others? Are any of the paid options worthwhile, or should I just stick to the free versions? What security software would you recommend in addition to anti-virus?
Anyway, it got me wondering whether I should use it or not. Would I be better off downloading something like Avast or Malwarebytes? Is there one piece of antivirus software that's significantly better than the others? Are any of the paid options worthwhile, or should I just stick to the free versions? What security software would you recommend in addition to anti-virus?
I've found only one free antivirus where the nag screens can be turned off and stay off. Panda has treated me right so far and if things keep going this way I'm going to buy the premium version just to support the company. It's efficient, effective, and -- most importantly -- silent.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
That would be "in before somebody says 'don't run Windows'".
Having said that, I've run Windows (among other things) for years, and haven't run anti-virus in over a decade for two reasons:
- it's more trouble than it's worth when you know what you're doing,
- it's hard to do any kind of virus research at all when you've got antivirus trying to delete every infected file you're examining.
In the time I've not run a/v, I've never had an infection. (I never had an infection before that, either, but that's beside the point.)
I use Comodo Endpoint Security on the kids' computer, and the HTPC, but my main Windows desktop hasn't had it for years, and won't have it for the foreseeable future, either.
All my Linux machines, of course, don't run anything, except for my mail server, which has ClamAV on it, just to scan attachments.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Even the paid version of AVG now spams pop-up advertisements. Definitely do not go with that.
I tend to use AV comparatives as one place to compare how anti-virus products are stacking up:
http://www.av-comparatives.org...
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I just can't picture needing anything beyond that.
While technically not an "antivirus" product in the conventional sense, Microsoft's Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit adds a significant layer of defense on top of Windows.
One of the main reasons i got rid of BitDefender. They started popping shit up on your screen even though I had a paid version. Fuck that.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Non-intrusive... and ineffective. I just cleaned up my brother-in-law's machine and that was what he was using.
My preferred approach is to use Avira Free (installed with ninite.com), MalwareBytes, HiJackThis, and the no-ads hosts file from mvps.
Secondary, install Google Chrome with adblock and a good no-script type program (though I personally just use Ghostery with AdBlock)
If treating for malware, bleepingcomputer is the site to go to. Run RKill, followed by ComboFix, ADWCleaner, and TDSSKiller.
This takes care of 99% of the issues, assuming you don't HAVE to continually visit some obscure Russian porn sites.
I agree. That's exactly what virtual machines excel at.
Any malware worth its salt will detect a VM (and the presence of debuggers and other things) and refuse to run. You need to be running on a physical machine to do malware analysis.
Or buy you a Mac.
Microsoft Security Essentials is Windows Defender is System Center Endpoint Protection.
Definition updates come out every few hours.
They all catch the vast majority of shit.
EMET (also free and from MS) will prevent many of the 0-day vulnerabilities that MSE/WD/SCEP could miss until the next definition update rolls out.
I use visual and audible cues like an oddly running HDD: going by the activity light mostly using SSDs.
Because a botnet is going to need a lot of hard drive on your computer with GB of extra RAM?
Also, fan operation, CPU temp, resource monitoring stuff.
Unless you've been coopted to mine bitcoins or something, your CPU temperature isn't going to be noticeable if your part of a botnet either.
Just checking out what .exes are running and/or in startup once in a while is a good habit.
Sure it is; for the low hanging fruit. The really good stuff doesn't show up in taskmanager because its told windows not to report it. It doesn't show up in the registry editor either. And windows explorer can't see the files on disk. Or maybe it's hiding in plain sight... some common service replaced by a malware version; that still performs all the original functions, but also does something... extra.
The idea that anyone could detect anything sophisticated with "visual cues" and "checking stuff" is laughable; on any OS.
An offline scan is usually required, that flags everything not known specifically to come from a trusted vendor... and the resulting list is probably going to be overwhelming anyway for the average person / average system. Only the most secure managed environments would be able have any real confidence.
Wow just, wow.
Guess you never heard of a flash exploit before? You probably think a user only has to click on something to be 0wned?
Go to any major website and you will get 0wned if an ad network is hit.
That is beyond ignorant and very dangerous advice.
http://saveie6.com/
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Any active AV software worth 5 seconds of attention watches the resident virtual memory ranges of all processes on the computer, they pick up virus signatures in both local processes and things running inside VMs unless you're running some kind of cheap AV software from the 90s that simply scans your non-volatile memory systems.
I've never heard of AV software scanning all memory pages of all processes. It seems like that would be hugely expensive in terms of CPU resources because a VM can easily touch many gigabytes of RAM in a very short term, and somehow the AV software has to compare this entire dirty page set against a database containing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of potential virus signatures. Without help from the hypervisor, it seems like this would be even harder since when it sees a dirty page, it has no idea where it came from, how it got there, or what it's doing, so it has to scan every block of data just in case it happened to be executable data.
When I was testing AV software, I played with a number of real and test viruses in my disposable VM, yet the host system never alerted on any of them.