blog: who needs antivirus?

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nikos
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blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by nikos »

here's the comment area for today's blog post found at
www.zabkat.com/blog/antivirus-programs-suck.htm
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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by Kilmatead »

I'm fairly certain the leet-speak kids who pretend to be "in the know" refer to it as being pwned, not "pawned", as that would be entirely too intellectual a past-time. :wink:

Given that all AV customers are just being manipulated anyway by an industry which seems only second to the powers-that-be when it comes to scaring people into obeisance and submission, suggesting a common-sense approach is no longer a useful ploy - in a world where a disturbing proportion of people get their news and opinions from the closed-loop of Facebook (or any social-media for that matter), there is no longer a "baseline" by which to judge common-sense.

(And that succinct pessimism is my nod to being "10% more anaemic" when posting this week, by order of the Greek Gestapo. :shrug: We'll explain in greater detail precisely why you're all doomed next week when the proscription is lifted. Assuming, that is, that there has not been an alarming invasion of suspiciously non-linear pawn-movements in the meantime. Things like that tend to upset straight-thinkers like Nikos. Just wait until he starts blogging about this sort of thing, and then we'll know he's not on the chessboard anymore. :D)
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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by Tuxman »

Now just one more of those articles I randomly link when being confronted with Linux kids (seems like it's impossible to use Linux and be an adult at the same time) who try to mock my system because of "all the viruses!!1".
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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by pj »

So if I understand your blog:
1. You acquired malware that executed on your computer. In your words you were "pawned", or "pwned" as K puts it.
2. You only use IE for browsing and MSE for protection.
3. You don't use a modern anti-virus program like AVG, Avast, Comodo, etc. or browse with Firefox enhanced with NoScript, or WOT.
5. Presumably you use the techniques you describe, i.e. Virustotal and a VM.
5. You state using only IE is not a risk problem and anti-virus isn't necessary ...
... but you still got infected.

I thought the definition of insanity was continuing to do the same thing but expecting different results. Must be a Greek thing...

-------------------------
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pschroeter
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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by pschroeter »

Watch out for human computer virus vectors. By strange happenstance over the past week twice someone has called me with a very heavy foreign accent but English sounding name and told me there was something wrong with my computer and they needed access to it.
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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by RightPaddock »

Tuxman wrote:Now just one more of those articles I randomly link when being confronted with Linux kids (seems like it's impossible to use Linux and be an adult at the same time) who try to mock my system because of "all the viruses!!1".
In the past year I have deloused 3 Linux system and 4 OSX systems - two of the Linux systems were running ESET !

FWIW I run Defender (nee MSE) and Malwarebytes alongside it. I have UAC and Smartscreen turned off.

BTW : Malwarebytes suggests I not visit a site referenced here
Screenshot - 2015_10_19 , 10_05_02.JPG
My experience is that MWB doesn't issue many false warnings, unlike certain others, what :roll:

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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by profess »

i used to (geekily) be into fixing pc's, removing av and what not. used to quite enjoy it. used to get paid by people to do it! oh the good old days.

Nikos (or others) do you know what the virus was called that has those characteristics? especially with the windows 98 screen and shutdown symptoms.
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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by dunno »

my 2c worth....

A black hat friend advised me to, "get a pc for banking only and that pc only goes online for banking, it is off-line otherwise. Get another pc for daily surfing sandbox the browser. Get another cheap pc for dark-net/powrn/torrent surfing sand box the browser there too.

I don't run any anti virus or malware software, UAC is off. I don't capriciously install free or cracked software, searching for cracks is a sure path to STD's.

and there it is, to date no strangeness, I do a clean install every year on my daily use pc.

I always wonder at who would click on a link or reply to a email that states or requests , "you have just won, please verify your bank details, You too can be part of this great scheme, I love you" etc, really *sigh*.
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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by nikos »

to a couple of absent-minded guys above, did you read the article? Do you understand what a dream of infection is? as opposed to really get "pwned"?

@rightpaddock, I don't know why totalcmd.net is coming up red for your tool, virustotal gives it a clean bill of health. Most probably some of the plugins from there are dodgy or falsely assumed dodgy. I am not saying that totalcmd.net is clean, everybody should follow their own instincts
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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by Kilmatead »

RightPaddock wrote:My experience is that MWB doesn't issue many false warnings...
I actually have a license for MWB, but only use the free-version precisely because their "web browsing" nonsense does nothing but issue false-positives by blackguarding whole domains based on rumours and spurious reports. And if you turn off their over-presumptuous module, you can't turn off the biddy warnings that you are "unprotected".

Their file-based product is excellent, but their web-based one is complete nonsense. (What is intended to be taken as online "scanning" is no such thing, all it does is look at your destination page and then report that "a friend of a friend of my dead granny said this was a bad place, so obviously it must be true." Rubbish. Like I said, Offline functionality: some of the best there is; Online: a joke.
nikos wrote:Do you understand what a dream of infection is?
The phrase you originally wrote "Then last night I had a nightmare; while working on my computer, I noticed..." is more of a semantic thing than a phantasmagorical one in English - I don't know anyone who would read it as you (apparently) intended. People referring to their normal everyday endeavours as "nightmares" has become so commonplace that it's no longer useful as a literary device. :sad:

Must try harder. :wink:
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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by RightPaddock »

Kilmatead - I can't recall the last time I got a notify from MWB when web browsing, long time ago. Your mileage probably varies due to the back alleys in which you lurk or maybe its a hemispherical effect. I do get a few from my bit torrent client. MWB Pro does things that I find useful, maybe other things do them too; but as with many things (Shelltoys, x2, Goodsynch... et al), when I was looking, MWB was all I could find that did what I wanted.

nikos - I'm sure your right about totalcmd.net, its often the advertisers. But as I just indicated I very rarely get those messages from MWB. I was surprised to see it here, especially since I came via your 'who needs antivirus' blog post ;)

As you suggested a lot of malware comes via email, but not only from junk mail. I have deloused several systems, including two of those OSX systems I mentioned, where the malware came from a known sender. I forget what they're called but they propagate by adding spurious attachments to outgoing mail, an eSTD maybe :)

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Kilmatead
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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by Kilmatead »

RightPaddock wrote:Your mileage probably varies due to the back alleys in which you lurk...
Absolutely! I make no secret of the fact that I will torrent everything in sight (how else can you experience the real world, yet to spend your youth dancing with painted ladies of the night?). But that's exactly my point - sure someone somewhere has downloaded a dodgy copy of Windows from the Pirate Bay, but my contention is that MWB bans the entire domain (not even an attempt at a subsection), so apparently all music, all films, all ebooks, etc, etc, etc - none of which are executables (and if they were as spoofing they don't work anyway so the community regulates it).

In other words, the extent of their "online protection" amounts to the same irrational censorship that led to the Marquis de Sade or Oscar Wilde having some minor legal difficulties with their books. It's opinionated rubbish based on nothing, masquerading as an authority by prancing about the place screaming "fear in the name of safety" and abusing its great (and well-deserved!) reputation for the file-based protection at the same time. In real life, that's something to be ashamed of, but on-line, it's what apparently passes for virtue, in the absence of the real thing.

And if you waste your time defining "exceptions" for every Russian, Chinese, Malaysian et al site you want to visit, it's funny how the next month they "conveniently" find some excuse to wipe those user-exceptions due to "important signature updates".

I assumed at first that their little web-browser plugin thingy actually did something useful (such as scan your downloads or look for malicious javascript) - but no, it's just another web-censorship tool. Apply the phrase "our patented technology" to toilet roll and you're still only left with tissues on a stick - no "technology" involved.

Like I said, for offline protection they can't be beat (and they play well with others, which is always a good sign) - but online they're nothing but smug self-serving wasters in my view.

Hence, I gave them my 20-quid for a license out of 50% respect, but would never ever subscribe to the non-functionality it purports to give me. (Yes, continuous disc-scanning is all very nice, but it too is unnecessary at the end of the day.)

All that being said - what I object to most is that despite years (YEARS!) of user-requests on their forums to be able to simply switch off the "web browsing nag" when you disable that module, all they do is sit there and sanctimoniously peep "no, we know better, so stop asking".

Wasters.

Rant-over! :D (For now. :twisted:)
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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by RightPaddock »

Image
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Kilmatead
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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by Kilmatead »

Yes, you could always turn off the module, but when you do that every-bleedin'-time MWB starts up it flashes a nag-message about the world coming to an end because you have taken your pretend-condom off. There is no way to disable the display of that message. That's my beef. There is something obscene about not having an option in a programme that you paid for to turn off a simple message for some service you don't need. File-protection: Good; Web-Protection: Bad.

(Just to show that I'm not completely nuts, I should point out that I use Comodo Security [Firewall, et al], and that has a similar module that does the same thing as MWB Web-Protection - except Comodo's does not fire-off a hundred false-positives every five minutes (whence browsing about the Slavic-Orient Express), so I am far more likely to take it seriously when it does actually give a real web-warning. MWB is way way way too nanny-ish, so it's impossible to take seriously. So, one turns it off. Then the programme incessantly tells you that you turned it off, and you can't turn that off. Madness.)

(And as much as I appreciate decent vintage English sports cars, I'll always supplicate first before a Ferrari, and [what appears to be] a silver '62 Lotus second [if said ferrari is unavailable]. :D But I could be wrong about the year. T'was before me father forgot his own pretend-condom, t'was. Back when men were men and cars were bloody proper. :wink:)
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Re: blog: who needs antivirus?

Post by RightPaddock »

:shocked: :shocked: I used Comodo for a while in the noughties, on XP. My memory is that its footprint was huuuge, it frequently BSOD'd, it demanded a lot of care and attention. And I was forever installing new versions which would break things that worked last week. When it comes to testing nikos is NASA compared with the Melee crew. After a while I gave up on it, and switched to Online Armor (IIRC it's now in the Nod32 Suite) it wasn't as bad footprint and crash wise - but I spent just as much time managing (baby sitting) it, more than I spent doing real work. In my mind in Comodo, Online Armor and POS are synonymous. I don't recall any of them ever detecting anything - good or bad - but nor does anything else :lol: :lol:

One of things I like about MSE/MWB is that they have a small footprint, require very little care and attention, and they certainly don't nag me. If you want to be nagged then try enabling UAC and SmartScreen.

I have MWB for its PUM and PUP detection feature. The occasional 3 sec silent, unobtrusive false alarm notification is a price I'm willing to pay.

Comodo - swat that fly, slay that dragon and kill that wumpus :alien: :devil: :rolleyes:
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