Hello,
In the past 6 months I've gotten random Malware on my pc without any logical reason. Yes I don't run a real time A/V protection (why don't I use a realtime av you ask? tl:dr version, it slows the pc down) ( but scan on demand once in a while, also use AdwCleaner and malwarebytes once in a while to check if I missed stuff).
It usually manifests with a random browser hijacker/ad extension that is suddenly there or an odd process. Examining my programdata, system32 and program files folders further often reveals the culprit.
For example from last 7 days:
I was doing nothing ''odd'' last thursday the 23rd, at 8.01 am, some rubbish called ''Zealous Salary'' installed itself, I was doing nothing but browsing my work pc from home with LogmeIn or Teamviewer ( can't remember which, I use both) at that time. I noticed this odd process on a random check of my running processes. It was taken up abotu 40 mb of ram, and when I open the binary ( 7829kb) in notepad I notice plain text from what seems to be a python tutorial in it. I renamed this binary, moved it into a rar and removed all rights for it ( so only I can access it if needed). ( of course after killing the process)
Today, the 27th, while I was at work, at 12.51 in the midday, some browser hijacker/adware crap got on, ''ExstoraCouponi'' ( it infected both FF and Chrome), I was literally doing nothing at the moment, I was at work, pc was ''locked'' and that's all. I come back and bam, my chrome is infected/redirecting me to a site. (Examining the rubbish, it installed at 12.51)
Before this week all was fine for 2 months, I regularly check all my running processes and find nothing odd and scanned my SSD in those 2 months once too ( bar some false positives, nothing) but before that I had the same ''wave'' of crud in a week or so.
I'll be doing a full system scan tomorrow when at work when it doesn't bother me to see if some crud was missed by me ( I doubt it though).
What I'm wondering, is how does this **** get on my pc in the first place, it's been years since I used cracks ( and even then I used well known release groups only), I have both a router to pass through and a software firewall, and 99% of ads are blocked by ABP ( I don't even allow the ''unintrusive'' ones). I don't run any executables I don't know or visit any dodgy websites.
Is the only real way to prevent this having an active realtime antivirus ( slows down computer a lot, for example avast slows Steam downloads from 24 to 10 ish mb/sec with 25 or 50% cpu use on the the Avast process, it also noticeably slowed down installing programs, moving files around and even rendering websites). My experience is with a lot of antivirus apps, and they all slow down one or the other. Only ones that were barely noticeable were bitdefender and Kaspersky, but both of them slightly slowed down some specific things too.
Is there a way to trace a file has come from, I still have the ''zealous salary'' binary and .dat. in a rar file now if anyone wants to take a peek, because I'm curious how this crap got on in the first place ?
In the past 6 months I've gotten random Malware on my pc without any logical reason. Yes I don't run a real time A/V protection (why don't I use a realtime av you ask? tl:dr version, it slows the pc down) ( but scan on demand once in a while, also use AdwCleaner and malwarebytes once in a while to check if I missed stuff).
It usually manifests with a random browser hijacker/ad extension that is suddenly there or an odd process. Examining my programdata, system32 and program files folders further often reveals the culprit.
For example from last 7 days:
I was doing nothing ''odd'' last thursday the 23rd, at 8.01 am, some rubbish called ''Zealous Salary'' installed itself, I was doing nothing but browsing my work pc from home with LogmeIn or Teamviewer ( can't remember which, I use both) at that time. I noticed this odd process on a random check of my running processes. It was taken up abotu 40 mb of ram, and when I open the binary ( 7829kb) in notepad I notice plain text from what seems to be a python tutorial in it. I renamed this binary, moved it into a rar and removed all rights for it ( so only I can access it if needed). ( of course after killing the process)
Today, the 27th, while I was at work, at 12.51 in the midday, some browser hijacker/adware crap got on, ''ExstoraCouponi'' ( it infected both FF and Chrome), I was literally doing nothing at the moment, I was at work, pc was ''locked'' and that's all. I come back and bam, my chrome is infected/redirecting me to a site. (Examining the rubbish, it installed at 12.51)
Before this week all was fine for 2 months, I regularly check all my running processes and find nothing odd and scanned my SSD in those 2 months once too ( bar some false positives, nothing) but before that I had the same ''wave'' of crud in a week or so.
I'll be doing a full system scan tomorrow when at work when it doesn't bother me to see if some crud was missed by me ( I doubt it though).
What I'm wondering, is how does this **** get on my pc in the first place, it's been years since I used cracks ( and even then I used well known release groups only), I have both a router to pass through and a software firewall, and 99% of ads are blocked by ABP ( I don't even allow the ''unintrusive'' ones). I don't run any executables I don't know or visit any dodgy websites.
Is the only real way to prevent this having an active realtime antivirus ( slows down computer a lot, for example avast slows Steam downloads from 24 to 10 ish mb/sec with 25 or 50% cpu use on the the Avast process, it also noticeably slowed down installing programs, moving files around and even rendering websites). My experience is with a lot of antivirus apps, and they all slow down one or the other. Only ones that were barely noticeable were bitdefender and Kaspersky, but both of them slightly slowed down some specific things too.
Is there a way to trace a file has come from, I still have the ''zealous salary'' binary and .dat. in a rar file now if anyone wants to take a peek, because I'm curious how this crap got on in the first place ?
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( and being the greedy sod I am 
). As the only thing it slows down a little bit is installing of new apps, but only slightly and it has one of the best detection rates.
)...