How did they slip past AVAST?

Layback Bear said:

1. You can have a stealth infection in a backup and not even know it.
2. When one knows so much that they laugh at infections they are surly doomed.
.

"Stealth infection." What is that might I ask? An infection that does absolutely nothing?
That's very odd. What's the purpose of the infection? To demonstrate stealth?
Yes, I've been laughing at infection since imaging, AV's, and firewalls became available.
And it's a shame that those spending all this time here - WEEKS SOMETIMES - trying to rid a computer of infection, don't make it a habit to ALWAYS ask if the poor guy/gal asking for help has an image to restore, or a manufacturers recovery partition. Many do.
THEN decide which is best - restore an image, or go through conniptions trying to remove infection.
Even a HD format and clean install is often faster than removing an infection.

THEN tell anybody who will listen that ATTEMPTED infection removal is a poor substitute for restoring the PC with an image that NEVER HAD AN INFECTION.
Of course most people won't listen, so it's not like somebody will be deprived of the endless pimping of various AV and malware removal tools. Or of all the money-making and hobbying derived
But at least they could say "I tried."

Now, what is your issue with me having a clean, infection free computer by using MSE, Win 7 firewall and some care in clicking, And of restoring my PC in 5 minutes with an image?
What exactly is your problem with that?

Victor S said:

Now, what is your issue with me having a clean, infection free computer by using MSE, Win 7 firewall and some care in clicking, And of restoring my PC in 5 minutes with an image?
What exactly is your problem with that?

How do you know you don't have an infection? Depending only on MSE (or any other AV) only, especially one, like MSE, that has been shown to miss infections, isn't going to ensure that.

I have no problem making images and restoring them. I make at least one image a week and kept the first image I made when I first installed Win 7, AFTER running multiple scans to ensure nothing snuck in while installing Win 7 and catching up on the updates. It has happened; in fact, it happened to me when I was using MSE. MSE didn't detect the two Trojans that MBAM picked up. There were also numerous tracking cookies that SAS found, even though the only contact I had with the internet was from downloading M$ updates. I hadn't installed any programs other than my antimalware programs. After I installed my programs and updated them, I ran additional scans to ensure nothing snuck in, then made a second image, which I also have kept.

The fact is, whether you believe it or not, you do not know for a fact that the images you are placing so much faith in are clean. Malware can sneak in through security holes in Win 7 and various other programs before they get patched. AVs don't always pickup on those and, considering MSE's poor track record (based on multiple independent AV reviews as well as my own experience), I certainly wouldn't depend on MSE to be any better than others.

While "care in clicking" will reduce the chances of infection, it will not ensure infections not getting in. Legitimates sites frequently get infected. No one AV will always stop those infections. A simple AV like MSE won't stop spyware or tracking cookies and even the best AVs won't stop them all. That's why you need more than one antimalware program to improve your chances of catching everything.

While Win 7's firewall is a huge improvement over XP's, as installed, it's basically just a one way firewall that only minimally protects against illicit outgoing transmissions. While it can be set to limit outbound transmissions only to trusted applications, very few people do because of the difficulty of doing so. There is a program that replaces Win 7' firewall's dashboard, making setting the firewall for outbound transmissions, as well as inbound, much easier but most people who are savvy enough to realize Win 7's fire wall can be improved upon prefer to just use a good, third party firewall that is much easier to use.

Layback Bear said:

...The Lady does more backups in a month than I do in a year....

Depends on the number of backups you do in a year. I do a weekly image of my boot drive that I save on my main data drive. I will do an additional image if I make a major change and just before trying out new software or settings. I clone the data drive onto two locally stored HDDs once a week and whenever I dump a large amount onto the data drive in a short period of time. I do a monthly clone onto a third HDD that is kept in a safe deposit box at my credit union. That HDD gets rotated out monthly. If I dump huge amounts of data onto my data drive in a short period of time, I'll rotate out the offsite HDD more frequently.

I also have a Carbonite account that continuously backs up my data online. That covers any gap between when data is generated and I make my weekly backup. It also will make complete recovery of data possible should I lose my computer and both local backups (such as my home burns down). While I could download all my uploaded data from Carbonite, since downloads take so long, it would be much faster to use the offsite HDD to recover as much as possible, then use Carbonite to recover the data added since the backup was made (same goes for the local backup HDDs).

All that backing up may seem anal but the vast majority of my data is irreplaceable or expensive and/or time consuming to replace.

Layback Bear said:

...Lady Fitzgerald if I have portrayed your serious belief in security incorrectly please spank me...

If anything, you understated it. I've seen too many tales of the damage malware can do, not just to computers but also to people's lives when their identity is stolen, to not be serious about it.

And no, I won't spank you. You would enjoy it too much!

Layback Bear said:

...If Malwarebytes Anti Malware made a complete anti virus, anti malware, firewall program I would buy it in a heart beat.

Most likely, I would too. Being the cheap, old bi...er...broad I am, I tend to use freebies but, when MBAM Pro was on sale for half price a while back, I snagged a couple of lifetime licenses.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

Victor S said:

Now, what is your issue with me having a clean, infection free computer by using MSE, Win 7 firewall and some care in clicking, And of restoring my PC in 5 minutes with an image?
What exactly is your problem with that?

How do you know you don't have an infection? Depending only on MSE (or any other AV) only, especially one, like MSE, that has been shown to miss infections, isn't going to ensure that.

I have no problem making images and restoring them. I make at least one image a week and kept the first image I made when I first installed Win 7, AFTER running multiple scans to ensure nothing snuck in while installing Win 7 and catching up on the updates. It has happened; in fact, it happened to me when I was using MSE. MSE didn't detect the two Trojans that MBAM picked up. There were also numerous tracking cookies that SAS found, even though the only contact I had with the internet was from downloading M$ updates. I hadn't installed any programs other than my antimalware programs. After I installed my programs and updated them, I ran additional scans to ensure nothing snuck in, then made a second image, which I also have kept.

The fact is, whether you believe it or not, you do not know for a fact that the images you are placing so much faith in are clean. Malware can sneak in through security holes in Win 7 and various other programs before they get patched. AVs don't always pickup on those and, considering MSE's poor track record (based on multiple independent AV reviews as well as my own experience), I certainly wouldn't depend on MSE to be any better than others.

While "care in clicking" will reduce the chances of infection, it will not ensure infections not getting in. Legitimates sites frequently get infected. No one AV will always stop those infections. A simple AV like MSE won't stop spyware or tracking cookies and even the best AVs won't stop them all. That's why you need more than one antimalware program to improve your chances of catching everything.

Except for slamming MSE and slamming me for daring to say I laugh at infection, you've said nothing new to me.
Everybody knows that there is no 100% guarantee. You can quit beating that dead horse.
Everybody knows that no AV is 100% effective.
As I've said, you can argue about the best prevention all you want to.

Now what remains is what to do when you get infected. And why it is best to laugh than to cry.
You've made only weak arguments against using an image as a cure.
"It might be infected." "You can't guarantee." "How do you know it's clean?"

I don't know why you repeat this, except perhaps to argue.
You suggested you got infected either from MS or from attack through your firewall, or an image was infected. It's wasn't clear. Sounded like "Abandon all hope" to me.

None of my images are infected.
Of course you can say "You don't know that."
I don't deal with "might, maybe, perhaps." They are recipes for doing nothing, or over-reaction.

I'm going to repeat this. Using a solid imaging process to restore an image taken when you're not infected is the BEST method to cure an infection, without doing a clean install. And is much better than a clean install in many, many ways.

I have not seen you or laybackbear address that. Only "Images might be dirty."
Why not come out and say "Only a clean install will do."
Of course that won't work either, because it seems you've said "The boogeyman will get you, whatever you do."
I reject that mentality, and - in terms of cure - laugh at infection.
Nothing you have said has changed that.

My base images are over 3 years old. I NEVER make an image without first restoring a base image.
Then I do the necessary updates/tweaks and immediately make a new base image.
My images were never exposed to day-to-day system use. Not a one of them.
You don't mention doing that. If you don't, you've unnecessarily exposed yourself to making an infected image.
You guys are claiming, despite my experience to the contrary, that "Your images could be dirty."
Well, la-de-da. And I might get hit by a meteor too.
Here's something to think about. An "infection" that is unseen by the occasional scan, and has NO deleterious effect is not something I will EVER worry about. Nor should anybody but the paranoid.
Even a time-bomb infection that can't be discovered is nothing to worry about.
Because it can't be discovered.
Might as well worry about unseen meteors or skin parasites.

In +3 years with my Win 7 system I have seen no infection after restoring, or suffered ANY deleterious effect. So that's that.
You can "imagine" whatever you like. I'll deal with the known facts of my experience.
If you want to doubt my PC knowledge, and say "You might not recognize deleterious effects," go right ahead.

Now, people come here for 3 basic reasons. Their PC's are infected, or they suspect they are infected, or they want to prevent infection.
I suggested a method of infection cure that essentially makes infection removal a non-event.
All I see here is resistance to that, and all kinds of excuses why it is invalid.
In fact, you laughed at the idea.
Yet there is no issue with sending people to malware removal sites.
There is no issue with stringing out "cures" for weeks, when the poor guy/gal could have reinstalled a clean system 20-50 times in the time it took to go through all the "removal" steps they are led through here.
Or restored an image in 5 minutes.
It strikes me as very strange.

I'm not saying the infection removal done here has no value.
But unless the relative efforts of "cures" are weighed at the beginning of the process, a disservice is being done to those seeking help.

So my apologies for suggesting my alternate method of cure. The 5 minute cure.
You're welcome to go back to scaring people up.
Or maybe you can just laugh at me.
You've done quite a job in rejecting imaging as an infection cure.
But I'm not buying it. Not a penny's worth.
Been using the method for years.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

OK, I've never had a BSOD caused by Avast. The only problems I've had with Avast was the current version would disable IE10 (I just rolled back to the previous version to fix that) and the Web Rep tool was causing IE 10 to crash frequently, probably because it was clashing with WOT. Since I prefer WOT, I just disabled the Web Rep tool. Those are nothing compared to the problems I had with MSE.

Avast free recently came out with another version and it appears to have corrected all the problems the previous two versions had. IE10 seems to be working just fine with this version. I also re-enabled the Web Rep tool and, so far, haven't had any crashes after an hour with ten tabs open while browsing.