Horses and Carts

Hi all
I'm sure readers of this thread have often noticed my general "Scepticism" with typical AV software generally.

In the light of the latest threat (post appears in this section of the Forum) one should ask WHAT are you actually trying to do.

Suppose you find out AFTER a scan that your computer has a Virus -- well other than that you should wipe your computer, re-install the O/S and data either from scratch or restore from a known CLEAN image backup you can't possibly know how long its been there or what its actually done -- so I go back to the main point ANY AV software that just tells you AFTER you have been infected is a WASTE OF TIME and NOT WORTH INSTALLING.

The only valid protection mechanisms are REAL TIME protection ones which also can give you the option of doing a full scan at times convenient to you.

PASSIVE protection mechanisms are 100% NO USE and why people still spend money on that type of software is beyond me.

IMO MSE is probably the safest way to go since I would imagine that the guys who actually CODED the OS should have some decent ideas on how to protect it -- as well as having the resources to actually work on defeating new attacks when they appear -

Corporate emails etc need another type of protection which probably DOES need a decent scanning system especially for email attachments etc. However I am dealing with small home type networks or stand alone machines.

In any case the BEST protection BY FAR is 100% HUMAN -- no software required -- just use the computer SENSIBLY and dont pass passwords etc around.

IMO MSE will be as good (or as bad) as any other package out there -- but at least its FREE and appears to do a reasonable job at REAL TIME protection consuming almost no resources.

Save yourself some money folks.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Suppose you find out AFTER a scan that your computer has a Virus -- well other than that you should wipe your computer, re-install the O/S and data either from scratch or restore from a known CLEAN image backup you can't possibly know how long its been there or what its actually done -- so I go back to the main point ANY AV software that just tells you AFTER you have been infected is a WASTE OF TIME and NOT WORTH INSTALLING.

Hi, jimbo45.

One point to consider is that vendors have different sources for adding to detection. Thus, particularly when it is a new malware variant, it may not have been added to detection at the time the computer became infected. It was subsequently found because the definitions were updated to include the variant.

Note: The above is not meant to start a discussion on heuristics, merely an explanation on how malware can be missed at one point by a program and subsequently found in a scan.