How do you know you haven't got a virus?

AshD93

AshD93

AshD93

Associate
Joined
21 Oct 2009
Posts
1,613
Hi guys,

Just wondering, apart from a clean install, is there any 100% method to know you haven't got a virus?

I went to my cousins yesterday and he put all our family photos onto a removable hard drive. But I know his laptop has some odd stuff on it so I don't really trust it (When he did a scan, its clean.. AVG).

Brought it home and I'm fully virus scanning it and my laptop with MSE before anything else.

So as above, what is a 100% method bar clean install to know you haven't got a virus?

Ash
 
Chances of you having a virus are slim, that is unless you spend all your time on dodgy websites downloading everything that pops up and installing every last drop of **** software going!

As long as you have scanned the drive with an av you trust then there is no problem!
 
There isn't really a way to be sure that you haven't got a virus, However a scan with a decent antivirus (MSE will do) and also Malwarebytes is generally good.

However there are always virus' in the wild that won't be detectable yet.
 
Are you running Windows 7? If so, Autorun is disabled by default.

You're not going to get infected if you're only copying photos.
 
Yeah, I am. It was more a general question. I don't know how viruses work as such but I could have transferred a infected file (talking in general?).

Regardless, did a full scan using MSE of the laptop and external drive and it came out clean. I'm **** scared of key loggers lol.
 
Aslong as you don't have autorun enabled on the device (as mentioned above) and you show extensions so that your 100% sure your copying/opening jpg files (or whatever image format they are in) rather than an executable masquerading as a picture (which would have say .exe extension) you should be safe in that regard.
 
Doesn't matter if you copy a virus on your removable drive it only matters if you run the program.

Things like music, videos and pictures can't really give you viruses unless they have been infected by a specific virus which targets a flaw in the software that opens them, which is really rare.

If you have a virus program file (like a keylogger) and it's not running (you haven't clicked it or ran/autorun it etc) then it won't harm your PC.
 
So whats all the scare mongering of if you open a email or go onto one dodgy website, you can have your whole computer infected?

Because surely, you would need to accept the download and then run the file before you had any issue?
 
AshD93 said:
So whats all the scare mongering of if you open a email or go onto one dodgy website, you can have your whole computer infected?

Because surely, you would need to accept the download and then run the file before you had any issue?
Click to expand...

That would be a virus exploiting a flaw in the web browser. Internet Explorer and ActiveX was one of those sorts of examples how a virus could get running on your PC.

In that scenario the web browser is the running program that would allow a virus page or site to mess up something.
 
The truth is you can't know 100%. You can get infected just by viewing files with Explorer, but it's extremely unlikely.

If you start talking about security in terms of absolutes it's a sign you're being complacent. It's all about probabilities and managing risk.
 
I normally:

Scan with the anti virus
Scan with malware bytes anti malware
Boot into safe mode, do a quick scan and save a screenshot of all the processes
Boot into windows normally and compare the process list
Google strange looking names in task manager

;)
 
I have 4 windows 7 pro boxes running MSE and have done since release.

Yesterday afternoon one of the laptops was infected with the Security Shield virus which at first glance you may not appear to be a virus particularly if the user does not have some idea how viruses present. On this occasion I was the user and the virus presented as a MSE alert followed by a very professional looking Security Shield dialog box along the lines of MSE has detected 7 malware instances click here to remove..... blah blah.

This hoax Security Shield managed to disable MSE, turn off the firewall and repeatedly shut the PC down (even in safe mode) every minute making it impossible / very difficult to install any tools.

After about an hour of fiddling about (and the uncertainty of knowing if I had removed the virus completely) I decided to do a bare metal restore from my WHS 2011 box and an hour and half later everything was fully restored and working beautifully again. Not the first time my WHS box has saved the day.

So yes on this occasion it was obvious I had a virus but the uncertainty of whether I could fully remove the virus prompted the full restore which was a non event having a WHS box with daily back-ups.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom