Some security suggestions please

[ZeroID (Brent)]

We run McAfee at work and one pC at home has it, part of the ISPs service free but otherwise I am now just using MSE. Previoulsy AVG free seemed ok, most others are resource hogs especially Symantec.
MBAM in emergency only.
If you stay away from torrent and music sharing sites (dodgy) you normally don't have too many problems. Only real bad in our household was when the young fella got onto limewire I think.
Maybe I've been lucky ... or careful ... or both.

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Originally Posted by Dooghan

MSE and I run my browser in a sandbox environment. The most likely way of me getting a virus is going to be through my browser. The virus gets installed into the sandbox and all I do is delete the sandbox. No more virus. I also have a script blocking plugin for my browser which helps stop virus getting on my PC in the first place. And I don't go to dodgy websites.

Out of interest, how do you sandbox your browser? Virtual machine?

[Dooghan (Dooghan)]

Originally Posted by troypiggo

Out of interest, how do you sandbox your browser? Virtual machine?

I use a program called Sandboxie. Not only can you use it sandbox your browser but any program.

[RAJAH235]

A bit of relevant info...

I just loaded a USB Flash drive with a couple of .exe files, which I intended to load onto a lady's M/C.
They were both versions of the Media Player Classic, one older version & the latest MPC HC.
She didn't have an app that would play an .flv/flash video that I had loaded previously.
I duly inserted the USB, the auto play UI kicked in, I opened the folder & low & behold....
her Nortons (paid for), immediately removed one & a pop up stated it had stopped a trojan from being loaded.

What!

Another false positive from good ol' Norton.

Seeing as she was in a hurry, I had no chance to check where Nortons had placed it.

I installed the "good" MPC HC version & showed her how to open/run/view the .flv/flash videos.

She was happy, so left it at that.
She said that her daughter would look for where Norton had hidden my file.
(Not that it matters.)

Nortons strikes again.

[Barrykgerdes]

I am not sure how the anti virus programs work but I would imagine that they search for a binary pattern that corresponds to a sequence in their data base.

This should work OK if the search looks at the whole virus but if the data base is simplified by reducing the length of the search pattern a small number of anomallies can occur. This can happen particularly with some compresion programs that end up with a binary sequence that resembles the search portion of a virus.

The simplified free programs will find the sequence and inhibit the action to be safe wheras a top notch program may look deeper if the abrieviated sequence appears and not record as a virus if the rest of the virus sequence is missing.

The biggest problems with the simplified programs is they usually wipe the (wanted) program so that you can't get around it.

Barry

PS there is a program in MinGW named elfedit.exe that has two versions one is 680KB and one that has 1.05MB. Malware bytes stops the 680KB version but not the 1.05MB version. A detailed examination of both files by Anti Virus program suppliers does not support the suspect Trojan. No harmful effects have yet been discovered by executing the suspect version of the program.

B.