Best antivirus around

[Ahleckz]

Just out of interest, how does common sense prevent trojans, exploits and drive-bys served up by legitimate sites like the BBC through iframes (for example)?

I don't know what that means, but how often are reputable sites like the BBC infected?
I do also use avast, but I've never had a notification of a virus from a site that wasn't inherently dodgy anyway and I accepted those risks when visiting it. Of course, my computer may be riddled and avast may just not be picking them up but it runs fine and the only one that is emptying my bank account is me.

 

[Rainmaker]

I don't know what that means, but how often are reputable sites like the BBC infected?
I do also use avast, but I've never had a notification of a virus from a site that wasn't inherently dodgy anyway and I accepted those risks when visiting it. Of course, my computer may be riddled and avast may just not be picking them up but it runs fine and the only one that is emptying my bank account is me.

Fair enough, had you said Avast earlier instead of just "common sense" I wouldn't have replied. FYI though, the BBC actually was infected recently, serving up malware from a hidden iframe. It was cross-platform too iirc, installing bad stuff invisibly. Google it for info, I'm on my phone atm. Just pointing out that common sense isn't the be all and end all these days.

 

[Ahleckz]

Fair enough, had you said Avast earlier instead of just "common sense" I wouldn't have replied. FYI though, the BBC actually was infected recently, serving up malware from a hidden iframe. It was cross-platform too iirc, installing bad stuff invisibly. Google it for info, I'm on my phone atm. Just pointing out that common sense isn't the be all and end all these days.

Yeah, it was a bit of a throwaway comment I suppose.
However, there are many people out there (hopefully not to many on here) that assume that having antivirus software on your computer is all you need to ensure safety when online when it really isn't - you need to rely on your common sense as well as software. But you obviously don't need to be told about this.
I'm sure a large portion of people here have fixed computers of friends and family that have been compromised by them being muppets. They'll usually come out with "but I have Norton!"

Just read about that BBC thing - very interesting.

 

[lunarwolf]

avast and malwarebyte

 

[tntcoder]

Fair enough, had you said Avast earlier instead of just "common sense" I wouldn't have replied. FYI though, the BBC actually was infected recently, serving up malware from a hidden iframe. It was cross-platform too iirc, installing bad stuff invisibly. Google it for info, I'm on my phone atm. Just pointing out that common sense isn't the be all and end all these days.

Surely using a patched up browser in combination with common sense would counter this threat though?

 

[Rainmaker]

Surely using a patched up browser in combination with common sense would counter this threat though?

By their very nature patches come out of known vulnerabilities. It's the unknown ones you have to worry about. Just look at pwn2own (not the greatest example, but it'll suffice). Fully updated platforms, often compromised in seconds and then later the vendor will update/patch the OS/browser/plugin as appropriate. Apple and Chrome, for example, released several patches last month (I think it was last month?) after the latest pwn2own exploited several vulnerabilities hitherto unknown.

Obviously common sense is your best friend, I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying that in this day and age with all the complex malware that's in the wild it's rather foolhardy to forego a negligible 10MB background service just because you think not visiting porn and piracy sites makes you safe.

e:
MacBook and Safari Cracked at pwn2own
Google Rushes to Patch Chrome for pwn2own Vulnerability

Obviously those browsers were 'patched up' at the time and you could have as much common sense as you like but that won't stop someone exploiting an unknown bug.

 

[tntcoder]

By their very nature patches come out of known vulnerabilities. It's the unknown ones you have to worry about. Just look at pwn2own (not the greatest example, but it'll suffice). Fully updated platforms, often compromised in seconds and then later the vendor will update/patch the OS/browser/plugin as appropriate. Apple and Chrome, for example, released several patches last month (I think it was last month?) after the latest pwn2own exploited several vulnerabilities hitherto unknown.

Obviously common sense is your best friend, I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying that in this day and age with all the complex malware that's in the wild it's rather foolhardy to forego a negligible 10MB background service just because you think not visiting porn and piracy sites makes you safe.

Fair point for most people I guess I take the view that should a zero day in a browser be exploited then there is a high probability that any malware injected will not yet be signatured but im biased as I generally dislike av

 

[Rainmaker]

Fair point for most people I guess I take the view that should a zero day in a browser be exploited then there is a high probability that any malware injected will not yet be signatured but im biased as I generally dislike av

Here I'm guessing you're mainly discussing Windows AVs (I note your sig, and add that 90% of my machines run *nix ). To be fair though you're being too simplistic. As I've said a few times in this thread signature based AV is old hat now. Heuristics, HIPS and automatic sandboxes with default deny are where it's at and make signatures redundant.

 

[tntcoder]

Heuristics are glorified fallback method to signaturing though and usually will fail. If you are a bad guy developing malware then you are going to test it against AV engines, and you can trivially develop it to bypass the heuristic flags so that at the time you release it, you are sure that nothing will detect it until it's signatured.

Sanboxing is very nice yep I agree, but not really sure you should need an AV product to do it? Obviously browsers are starting to sandbox, and Microsoft provide tech like Integrity Levels to make it easier to develop one. Wrapping an entire app in another sandbox is good but not something you need an AV to do.

For every good reason to use AV, there are equally as many bad arguments and examples for not using it.

 

[Radiation]

I switched from avast to mse but noticed on backups it slows the transfer by about half to an external drive, surely it doesn't need to scan every file that moves?

 

[HighlandeR]

Have been using Kaspersky internet security 2011 and Avira free editions, both were quite good I felt Kaspersky was detecting better/more accurate results but Avira was just more faster.

But lately ive been getting weird popups and mis-directing websites even while googling... I ran full updates on malwarebytes/superanti-spyware and even on kaspersky and avira full scans, nothing was coming up which boggled my head !

Uninstalled kaspersky and gave up on Avira and reloaded Nod32, full update and scan within 40 minutes found 8 other trojans/bugs....

Deleted them and past 3 nights not seen any issues, was surprised kaspersky and Avira my old favs were not able to handle them or keep my pc clean !

Gonna try out nod32, it is a lot more faster then both kaspersky/avira and found more bugs, that and malwarebytes hopefully will do the trick !

 

[snedie]

I switched from avast to mse but noticed on backups it slows the transfer by about half to an external drive, surely it doesn't need to scan every file that moves?

I'm glad you mentioned that as one of my servers is a database holder and if the AV is going to try scan every access to the database it's going to have a huge performance hit.

 

[snedie]

Have been using Kaspersky internet security 2011 and Avira free editions, both were quite good I felt Kaspersky was detecting better/more accurate results but Avira was just more faster.

But lately ive been getting weird popups and mis-directing websites even while googling... I ran full updates on malwarebytes/superanti-spyware and even on kaspersky and avira full scans, nothing was coming up which boggled my head !

Uninstalled kaspersky and gave up on Avira and reloaded Nod32, full update and scan within 40 minutes found 8 other trojans/bugs....

Deleted them and past 3 nights not seen any issues, was surprised kaspersky and Avira my old favs were not able to handle them or keep my pc clean !

Gonna try out nod32, it is a lot more faster then both kaspersky/avira and found more bugs, that and malwarebytes hopefully will do the trick !

Sounds like a good combo. After looking around on Google and a couple other forums Nod32 is getting thrown out there as one of the more dependable AV/Firewall/Security solutions. Not used MalWareBytes before but definitely going to check it out.

 

[Mana]

Avira user here, seems to protect me pretty nicely.

 

[G-MAN2004]

Eset Nod32

This.

I use it along with Malwarebytes and Spybot: S&D. Not had a virus or anything for ages.

 

[beachBOYken]

ive got nod32 but im interested in malwarebytes as well , can anyone tell me if it is fine working along side nod32 AV

i take it malwarebytes is not a antivirus program but just a tool for detecting and removing anything suspicious?

thanks

 

[Blue160]

Malwarebytes is an on demand virus scanner. No realtime protection, but very powerful when you run it. Works brilliantly in combination with something like MSE or Avast (or i assume Nod) to do the day to day stuff. It doesn't conflict with other AV, because it doesn't do anything till you ask it to.

 

[beachBOYken]

what does everyone use as there is the free version and the pro version for a fee but the pro version has a real time scanner?

 

[Blue160]

Free version as long as you have something else which is active all the time.

 

[Nelly]

As I mentioned in another thread yesterday.

My last Anti-Virus was Kaspersky Internet Security 2010, I installed 2011 around January but found that it made my CPU usage goto 100% running in the background! so reverted back to 2010 and all was fine.

I decided to try out Microsoft Essential Security tonight, found 2 malware and 5 Java type trojans/exploits, the full system scan took around 3 hours.

I also use Malwarebytes and Spybot - Search & Destroy.

I have reinstalled a newer version of Kaspersky 2011 and it seems that have ironed out the bugs, so sticking with it considering I have over 120 subscription days left.

I think it's safe to say that if you tried one anti-virus then another they will find a virus the other wont detect regardless of which anti-virus you are using.

If you want to see whats the best click here and have a good read: http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_od_feb2011.pdf