Anti-virus software... the problem instead of the solution???

[Scott]

This is a very interesting study, and I guess it makes lots of sense, but how the heck do you solve it???





Here is the article:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1445&tag=nl.e539

[Scott]

This makes me kinda proud to be an AVG user!

[Deviate]

Woot! BitDefender almost FTW!

[jayhawk]

Originally Posted by Scott

This makes me kinda proud to be an AVG user!

Same here. It is pretty good for being free, and it has saved my bacon a number of times.

Of course, with all AV applications, it is also good to run programs like SpyBot and Crap Cleaner once a week and HijackThis once a month. I do.

[Cobol74]

Good regime you got Jay IMHO - do similar. AVG on this machine with Zone alarm and SpyBot plus AdAware.

[epp_b]

I've had no problems with AVG...it just works, and that's fine by me.

[Scott]

My wife is on Vista and using McAfee corporate.... double whammie!

I will be removing McAfee later this evening... LOL

[swek]

To quote myself from way back:

Originally Posted by swek

Common sense. It serves me the best

And here's the pic to go with it



On a sidenote. I found ESET NOD32 to work for me. A low overall imprint, really fast scans and a good detection engine. What do you need more?

[prizrak]

Common sense doesn't work too well with self propagating worms. The best way to secure any OS is to make sure that you do NOT run as an Administrator/Root under normal conditions. It's a bit of a pain in Windows and when it comes to XP the rights separation is such a joke that makes nearly no difference (unless you are in a domain). Vista makes it a little bit better as it does allow to temporarily elevate permissions but the UAC is so naggy that it completely defeats itself as people will just turn it off.

AVG is pretty good, so is Symantec products, I hear people say good things about Kaspersky but last I used it it was a major drag on system resources. Best way to protect your data is to back it up often and run it on a separate HDD/partition.

As far as bugs go, all software has bugs. Even things that are considered to be the best/most secure have a huge number of bugs and vulnerabilities there is just no getting away from it. The main concern is always 0 day attacks as those happen before a patch can be put out. For the most part vulnerabilities are not exploited until after a patch is available, however number of 0 day attacks has been steadily increasing.

Reall my suggestion would be to not go with Windows if security is a big concern and you have no dependancy on Windows only applications. Of course for a very large number of people it isn't feasible so a good (read: hardware) firewall is a must as it would help contain a successful attack and stop most worms.

[epp_b]

...so is Symantec products...

What?

Symantec is garbage and a prime example of "causing more problems than it solves".

[petarkb]

I've found pretty much ANY antivirus program causes a bigger performance loss than any virus possibly could. If I have something really important, I back it up.

[Adunaphel]

^^ Botnets around the world will be rejoicing at that attitude. The purpose of viruses and other malware is no longer to slow your PC down, but either to use it in botnets to DDoS other networks, or to gather personal information to gain access to your paypal account or online banking account for instance.

And to all the people being satisfied with AVG: I've used it for 6 months on my pc, then switched to ESET NOD32 and removed 6 trojans from different keygens on my system AVG had TOTALLY missed (the joys of warezing)

[prizrak]

Originally Posted by epp_b

What?

Symantec is garbage and a prime example of "causing more problems than it solves".

Symantec works absolutely fine in my experience (and in the experience of a couple of friends who also work in IT).

I have found most A/V products to be roughly equal in their performance. They all have certain strengths and certain weaknesses there is no getting away from it. In reality a fully patched computer system with a good firewall wouldn't need an A/V. The only real reason for one is that they tend to update their DB's faster than OS patches can come out and therefore are a better line of defense against 0 day attacks. Having said that, there have been plenty of 0day/hour attacks that spread before A/V companies were able to put out an update for their software that could stop them.

[Viper007Bond]

Symantec is the biggest piece of shit ever. It made my dad's computer into a Pentium 1.

[Hidden_Hunter]

depends what you're talking about with Symantec, their commercial product is relatively light compared to others such as Sophos but if you're refering to stuff like Norton 360 then yes it is a piece of shit.

[LurkerPatrol]

Symantec corporate edition is small and doesn't take up much memory and isn't a processor hog like other products.

I used AVG and hated that it ran a scan every morning. I swear it was the downfall of my laptop hard drive.

The thing is you don't really need any of this shit. Just don't dl stuff from hax0rwarez.sex or some other site and you should be fine. A firewall and common sense is all you need.

[lvnproficy]

Damnit McAfee...

[prizrak]

Originally Posted by LurkerPatrol

Symantec corporate edition is small and doesn't take up much memory and isn't a processor hog like other products.

I used AVG and hated that it ran a scan every morning. I swear it was the downfall of my laptop hard drive.

The thing is you don't really need any of this shit. Just don't dl stuff from hax0rwarez.sex or some other site and you should be fine. A firewall and common sense is all you need.

If that were the case this would not be happening.

A firewall is good for one thing, an A/V is good for another thing and spyware protection is good for a whole different thing. You also need to remember things such as rootkits for which you have very little protection. I would also like to point out that firewalls are also subject to software bugs and vulnerabilities.

In fact there are countless exploits that take advantage of vulnerabilities in different browsers (completely bypassing a firewall), flash, java/javascript, php and so on. A firewall will do very little to stop that (same with A/V actually unless trojan/worm injection is the plan). It is also not particularly difficult to hijack a legitimate site. FinalGear can get infected with a worm (or other type of malware) and a firewall will not stop the infection.

To add to that quite a bit of malware has the ability to disable security center software these days. Not to mention masking packets to make them look like legitimate packets that quite a few personal firewalls (such as the XP firewall) will not be able to stop. SPI firewalls that are able to detect such packets will inevitably slow down your PC.

[LurkerPatrol]

Originally Posted by prizrak

If that were the case this would not be happening.

A firewall is good for one thing, an A/V is good for another thing and spyware protection is good for a whole different thing. You also need to remember things such as rootkits for which you have very little protection. I would also like to point out that firewalls are also subject to software bugs and vulnerabilities.

In fact there are countless exploits that take advantage of vulnerabilities in different browsers (completely bypassing a firewall), flash, java/javascript, php and so on. A firewall will do very little to stop that (same with A/V actually unless trojan/worm injection is the plan). It is also not particularly difficult to hijack a legitimate site. FinalGear can get infected with a worm (or other type of malware) and a firewall will not stop the infection.

To add to that quite a bit of malware has the ability to disable security center software these days. Not to mention masking packets to make them look like legitimate packets that quite a few personal firewalls (such as the XP firewall) will not be able to stop. SPI firewalls that are able to detect such packets will inevitably slow down your PC.

Great arguments, I retract my previous rubbish statements. I'm running symantec corporate on my desktop at home and on my laptop. In fact all of the UCs (University of California) mandate that you run SCE as part of their security pack. I think it does a fairly good job compared to things such as Norton 360 or AV 2008. It sits there and takes up little space while protecting you from most things.

Best things to have then are 2 firewalls, anti-spyware, anti-adware and anti-virus that ALL run MANUALLY. If they run automatically and take up CPU and memory and wear out the HD then that's BAD.

I still stand by my argument that common sense can be a great preventive tool that doesn't require you to run any of the software above. Just be as careful as you can on the internet and you should be able to avoid a lot of crap