I've looked at a lot of different tests concerning AV's, and they all have their own opinions on which one is the best. In 20 different tests you easily find 20 different results.
The best AV is the one you trust, keep updated and run on a regular basis.
Keeping all your programs up to date with the latest patches also helps ( I use Secunia for this).
And a little common sense when browsing the web.
Good post, especially the part about Secunia. I was reluctant to try, but now Secunia and WinPatrol are essetial parts of my arsenal.
Here you go oreo27, it's a good tool to have. You don't have to run it in the background all the time unless you want to. Running it once a week or so is good.
PSI - Consumer - Products
The Secunia PSI is a FREE security tool designed to detect vulnerable and out-dated programs and plug-ins which expose your PC to attacks. Attacks exploiting vulnerable programs and plug-ins are rarely blocked by traditional anti-virus and are therefore increasingly "popular" among criminals.
The only solution to block these kind of attacks is to apply security updates, commonly referred to as patches. Patches are offered free-of-charge by most software vendors, however, finding all these patches is a tedious and time consuming task. Secunia PSI automates this and alerts you when your programs and plug-ins require updating to stay secure.
AVG? i felt scared, AVG seem a bit dangerous, but you can see my post current thread.
When it comes to security on the web, common sense is king. I think that most anti-virus programs out there are over the top in terms of all the extra protection and feed upon the fear that people have about getting infected out of nowhere. Note how in the last 10 years more modules have been added to anti-virus software under the claim that malware has got increasingly sophisticated. The reality is while malware has become more advanced, there is little proof that all these "anti-malware" modules actually keep people safer. These days, malware coders can easily change the code within hours of initial release, leaving many virus chasers in the dust. Despite all these advanced programs, people are still getting infected and malware continues to propagate easily. As such, there is no single best anti-virus program and no one is 100% full proof. Knowing where you go on the web will prevent a lot of problems as do filters like Ad-block, no-script, betterprivacy, etc. which stop a lot of malware from loading.
So, how would common sense have helped me in this issue??
A coworker of mine comes up and says, "uh, I think something is on my computer as I was browsing the web and all of a sudden all of my browser windows closed and I have this pop up about Vista Security 2011 sitting there telling me my computer is at risk and is infected". When I ask him what he was doing on the Internet when the problem came up, he said, "Uh, I was searching for some new sunglasses". I asked, "were you using Google and Internet Explorer", he said Yes. I asked "Did you click on any links that came back as search results", he said, yes. I asked "were they all reputable sites you trust" and he was like....Ummm...how would i know.
But your other points are spot on. Our corporate AV didn't stop it, it hit his machine. It injected crap in the registry, it prevented malware bytes from running, it associated .exe files with itself. Took me a couple of hours to fully get it removed and the machine back in good working order.
But I struggle to see how common sense would have stopped this issue from happening, aside from not searching for sunglasses while at work.
Internet Explorer makes it easy for a lot of malware to be installed unless the user sets the highest possible security setting which effectively renders this browser useless. I have been using Mozilla and Firefox for the last 10 years and I have never been infected with anything browsing the web. I did get infected browsing the web with IE but not Firefox or even Opera (which I gave up on because it wasn't always rendering pages right).
Extensions such as Adblock and No-script help a lot. Not only they filter all the junk but they also block dangerous scripts from rogue websites. If your friend was browsing the site of a well-known retailer, I doubt the site is hacked.
But a lot of rogue websites out there masquerading as legitimate shopping sites have popped up. With the wrong security setting, they'll easily load malware through IE. But with extensions such as no-script, the site won't be able to load anything unless the user overrides it. As you noted, the anti-virus program here failed to kick in so these extensions are quite handy in adding another layer of security.
Generally speaking, browsing the web with IE and going on unknown websites is not exactly the best security strategy.
To add on your point, it's clearly more difficult to monitor a corporate environment than a home environment.
I never liked the active-x system. It loads any installed active x it can find into IE (Office suite, etc.) Creating a massive attack surface. Then there is the factor that it's plugin management page is messy in comparison to other browsers. So, you get there, disable the un-needed office plugins in IE etc. Next thing you know, Office no longer works properly.
It's this tie-in between Browser-OS and Browser-program (EX: office) that makes it such a dangerous browser. I really wish that they would switch to a more secure plugin system, that and make IE LESS hooked into the system in general.
Yes, popup attacks seem the more general route now, esp. for those fake AVs. On a side note, Noscript and adblock are awesome, they are what IE's security settings wish they were, but aren't.
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