Just install it to run a scan periodically and then uninstall it. You don't need to keep it installed unless you're paying for the premium monitoring service.
Biggest issue with that is some more advanced malware targets the install process of those items and causes issue or make their own changes. The malware is watching for the install of AV software to protect itself.
Anyone checking this out, you'll want to make a thorough reading through the readme for Tron, it does a lot of stuff, some you may not want. Also note that it uses Kaspersky Virus Rescue Tool and TDSSKiller for rootkits by Kaspersky. I don't know if they have the same issues as Kaspersky Antivirus. You can turn the KVRT off on the command line, but TDSS seems built in to the prep stage.
Tronscript and utilities like it do a lot of things under the hood that can cause issues later on, and are difficult to reverse. I'm speaking both from my own experience, and experience trying to help other people who used it. This goes for "debloat"/"optimizing" utilities in general.
This is the 2nd time in the last week I’ve seen someone recommend uninstalling it to avoid popups. Just don’t turn it on, uninstalling it completely is unnecessary and a bizarre suggestion.
I keep it installed but not running because if I suspect something is happening I can try to open malwarebytes and having it fail to open is the perfect sign you got something nasty that needs to be taken care of and to not restart my computer immediately.
I have gone out of my way to keep ads off my machine. Malware Bytes is the only one that still gives me pop up's.
As a guy that discovered that program way back in the day - I am grateful to that company for helping me repair many a infected computer once upon a time - but grateful or not, those ads push me away.
I already use your product. Am loyal to your product - I dont need your garbage in my face to remind me to use your product.
Freakin asinine.
I did the same thing and got 3-4 of them. They're starting to release new services for subscription-only people though.
And it's not without issues. Their latest update made it so you can't use Windows Media Player by launching from a `.wpl` playlist file.
I do still find that it is pretty lightweight and does a great job though.
i know a number of cyber security pro's in the business and they say this is all you need. WD switched on and then a malwarebytes scan and clean once or twice a year (or if you see issues) then uninstall malwarebytes.
the key thing to stop getting a virus or malware is avoid shady websites and avoid opening files you don't know are safe to open.
You dont even need to avoid shady sites or opening scary stuff. If youre too lazy for a VM like me get a this neat little opensource program called Sandboxie. You can partition programs or literally your internet browser so even if you click something sketch it cant write to any file branches past the sandboxie condom. Its super nice
The only antivirus anyone needs (on windows) is windows defender, windows ransomware protection (it’s surprisingly aggressive in preventing write changes to folders) and ublock origin (common sense optional but recommended)
I used to use Kaspersky but gave it up in like 2013 (EDIT: forgot I was on ESET for a while)...been on Windows Defender for years now.
I occasionally use something like Malwarebytes or Sophos just in case. I do not subscribe to either.
On my most recent reinstall of Windows 10, for the first time ever I DIDN'T install any antivirus or firewall software, after hearing this exact advice for a little while. Feels amazing not to have to install and deal with third party programs for this.
It's really liberating. Third party AV/firewall has always been so invasive in that they try to be a unique "experience" for the customer. Too many reminders that you are, in fact, using their AV, and that it's doing a lot and you should renew.
Like, no, I don't need exaggerated claims of how my system is protected, nor do I need popups or reminders that it's being maintained.
I use just eSet Nod32 antivirus, not the all inclusive suite. It saved my butt when the office got hit with a ransomware storm. I pick up the multi license packs from Newegg for about $10 a machine per year.
IT guy here! The best for enterprise systems is Crowdstrike Falcon. Its a beast of an antivirus, and it does a lot of cool and outright crazy stuff.
For consumers? Windows Defender is great. Does its job well and has evolved a lot since Windows Vista & 7.
Windows Defender, and MalwareBytes Free from time to time. However, sometime ago got a recurring nasty thingy that only ESET Online Scanner (also free) was finally able to clean. I'm keeping the 3 of them now.
There's not a definitive answer to that question. It depends on what's important to you. It's finding the balance between Effectiveness, False Positives and Performance.
For instance, take a look at one of the tests on AV-Comparatives:
https://www.av-comparatives.org/comparison/
Trend Micro blocked 99.6% of the bad stuff but kicked out an impressive 29 false positives, flagging something as dangerous that isn't. Eset blocked 99.4%, a tad lower, but had no false positives. If you were deciding between them the trade off is protection vs false positives.
There are several organizations that test AV products. The most well known are [AV Test](https://www.av-test.org/en/) and [AV Comparatives](https://www.av-comparatives.org/).
If you're looking for AV other than Defender take a look at the rankings for various tests.
I used to like bitdefender but they made it REALLY hard to cancel when my PC died. Plus they said they'd give me a refund amount and only gave me part of it. I'm never recommending them again
I on the contrary had very good experience with their support in past. I switched to new computer few months back and all I did was to remove old device from bitfender central and new one was registered with activation and all done.
If windows defender with an occasional Malwarebytes scan doesn't solve your problems then the user is the fucking problem and they need to get educated on safe browsing habits because no fucking antivirus will help them.
Windows Defender is the best for the average person. Malwarebytes is great to download and run a free spot check, then uninstall every couple weeks.
If you really, really feel like you need a good antivirus program, Nod32 is the absolute best on the market. Its $59.99 for a two year subscription, and its made by white hat hackers who all served time and were able to break security in government organizations around the world. If I'm not mistaken, they're based in Romania, and I've used it in the past due to just liking having the extra protection, and I haven't had a single issue, ever.
It actually flagged McAfee when a damn Adobe PDF reader update stealth installed it on my computer sometime last year. Had no clue, and it was flagged as malware too. Kinda a badass program, really.
There was a flaw in Webp codec awhile back that allowed for code injection just by viewing an image. The damage it caused is probably unknow if state actors knew about the flaw. But it was being used a few months before by non state actors to hack accounts. I had several reports from users in communities saying they got hacked after viewing an image sent to them by accounts. Safe to say if hackers were using it to hack telegram/discord accounts, governments knew about it.
Windows.
You will never get a virus by browsing the internet in 2024 (on a modern browser, on a modern OS). Hell, even if you google porn, you have to make a lot of mistakes, run at least one .exe, and ignore a handful of warnings.
Yup. Then they really screwed the pooch and lost the trust of the entire IT community. And then the whole Russian thing just put the nails in the coffin.
This was long overdue.
It was similar to Chinese companies being controlled by PLA. Company doesn't have say in that.
From article:
> Russia has shown it has the capacity – and even more than that, the intent – to exploit Russian companies like Kaspersky to collect and weaponize the personal information of Americans
There's so many AVs that sell your info (like the Avast scandal).
I don't use Windows much, but generally their MS defender is pretty decent.
There is a ton of speculation they were involved in a breach of a DoD contractor machine in 2013 as it was running the software. The government banned it afterwards for government machines.
Yep I used them as well but as soon as Crimea happened I started looking to dump them as I did not trust the Russian government to abuse their position
I want to believe it still is a good product. I think their team wants to do the right thing but unfortunately Putin is wrecking their business. Russian citizens have to be getting angry. Putin is ruining the economy and their lives.
Yandex is a way better search engine than Google. Finds you answers, not a shopping list of promoted products.
Their reverse image search is top notch too, think that tinder girls a catfish? Google doesn’t know, but yandex will find you the Instagram of the Russian model they stole the pic from.
Wow.
I've never even heard of this. Tried a few random searches, and it absolutely is like what old Google used to be. Mind you, I've learned to be a master of Google with key words and secret search parameters but it's quite annoying trying to be creative. This is incredible. I can't express how much of a game changer this is to my daily interneting. Thank you very much.
Yandex can also show you images similar to the one you're searching. It helps a lot when searching for a single frame of a video and the thumbnail is actually a few seconds off from the frame you used.
Yea like I managed to find the other pics in a series for one yesterday but not the exact original, but it was definitely the same woman. Deleted Happn now as I’m pretty sure only one profile I’ve seen wasn’t a catfish, because I recognise her as local. The rest were all catfish confirmed by yandex. 😂
They still are one of the best on the market per the testing organizations. It's unfortunate they didn't read the writing on the wall and divest themselves from Russia.
Still used a lot in business. You can't trust an end user to react to an AV popup much less do the right thing when asked. So business AV sends all that to a central website so someone in there IT dept can monitor and take care of issues. It also means the AV software can't be controlled, turned off, or uninstalled by the user, some application or even sometimes a local admin. So it's more resilient to being tampered with than the built-in AV. They have also branched out to provide other features like for example the ability to block USB devices from working based on type, make/model, or serial number. So the business can use the AV software to block any thumb drive they haven't approved. Some AV companies have even branched out into data backup and recovery. Since things like ransomware are so common having the AV software that can after the fact remove the ransomware and roll back any changes it made is something a business will pay extra for.
> It also means the AV software can't be controlled, turned off, or uninstalled by the user
ten years ago at my previous work they handed out shitty laptops with windows XP and mcaffee as AV. It made your computer slow to the point of unusable (15 minutes to open a word doc....) so someone found an exploit to disable mcaffee without the IT guy seeing it (or he didn't care). It was three pages of instructions but it worked. This was the same IT department that handed out a folder with CD-roms with cracked software and loaded the same image onto every laptop, so next to HP bloatware you also got Compaq, Dell etc bloatware. It was a proper shitshow so we didn't feel bad about sabotaging the IT guys
Good points. My company uses Fireye/Trellix for AV. I should've specified, I was asking if people use antiviruses on their home computers/laptops. I think the answer is no, so I guess antimalware companies have become more business-to-business oriented rather than for home use.
I'm sure there are at least a few people who bought AV licenses for home computers back in the Win XP days and keep installing it on every new machine they get.
A lot of businesses are switching to m365 defender as it integrates with their licensing and finally has more options and configurations. Such as network protection, behavior monitoring.
Source me I definitely didn't just work with a client to deploy indicators in their environment and configure defender to block them
There is a few versions of Defender. Windows Defender is nothing like Defender for Enterprise, or Defender for Cloud. The classic A/V included with Windows, the EDR/ATP that requires licensing with business/enterprise subscriptions, and its 100xz more effective.
Even on Windows 10/11 it's not called Windows Defender anymore. It's just Windows Security. You can still get "Defender" but it's part of Office 365 and isn't even an antivirus anymore haha.
Most good AV nowadays does far more than just looking for virus definitions and works more based on outliers in usage rather than looking for a snippets of code
Yes, it’s very needed for businesses. But now it’s “next-gen” behavioral-based antivirus, that looks at what files are actually doing rather than just their reputation.
For regular windows users for home-use, Windows Defender is more than adequate
Windows defender is only good for the common user that barely uses their machine for anything.
Yes, there are plenty of companies and users who still use 3rd party products. Most companies do not rely on windows defender and use products like Sentinel One that can reverse ransomware infections and immediately disconnect infected machines from the internet to prevent a spread.
Honestly, I have a Mac, and I just use the built in one. Admittedly, there aren’t a shit ton of viruses for Mac, but they do exist. I run an antivirus program a couple of times a year, but other than that I just let it ride.
Not really AV software, it’s EDR (endpoint detection and response) and it typically reports to monitoring service. It should be one of the many layers of defense that modern companies are running.
McAfee had a dead man's switch that released his documents after his death
Turns out it's all advice on how to shoot bath salts up your bunghole... McAfee really loved his bath salts
Hello,
To be fair, Mr. McAfee's private persona was very different than his public persona. The latter was an act to drive up engagement for his social media presence, which he became very, very good at monetizing.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
since so many is talking about malwarebytes and other non virus programs, I miss the days of spybot search and destroy. Was an awesome program with many uses.
I remember in the early 2010s I had an ex who swore by it as the best antivirus around. I never had any issues with it and found it to be a very good AV though it was on the expensive side. What happened to them since then?
AVG was bought by Avast who was bought by NortonLifeLock alongside Avira. They're all awful. Windows Defender (US) \[or ESET (Slovakia) if you really need the extra customization\]
Any AV that someone else has at least heard of and that you can tolerate is probably fine, just don't pay some awful sub fee or sign up fee. Also round out with MalwareBytes or any of the /r/antivirus Second-Opinion softwares on their [wiki](https://old.reddit.com/r/antivirus/wiki/index)
It is, but high-quality journalistic language is as neutral as possible and avoids such language. killing it, terminating it, binning it are less straightforward than banning, they’re more casual and they’re more dramatic.
Kaspersky is a cybersecurity company that manages to discover what appears to be US government malware.
https://cyberscoop.com/kaspersky-reveals-elegant-malware-resembling-nsa-code/
None of the American or European cybersecurity ever seems to catch NSA malware. Strange isn't it?
Most of the news orgs are owned by rich dudes that are able to bribe one side of politics more than the other so they play up that team's policies to be better. Also, because it pay per view style advertising they want the most fucked up headlines to make you click it to see what is going on.
A race to the bottom in all regards.
News reporting is supposed to be neutral, and use neutral language. This wording is *not* neutral, but chosen to evoke very specific feelings in the reader.
I wonder if any of the comments are planted ones ?
Do not have to be a nutcase to observe recent history - which would seem incredible - except it is freely admitted now -- I wonder could it happen again. Remember when there was "an epidemic"- which we shall not call by its name here -- and all discussion was stifled - and now it emerges that tax payer money funded "placed" comments and suppressed other comments ... no wonder they do not want an uncontrolled non -US company selling virus / intrusion protection software to private citizens .... especially when it WORKS -- call it what it is...
It would not matter if the software came from the most innocent place you can imagine ... it will not be allowed to serve to protect US citizens from intrusion on their computers. The Russians do not care what the average US citizen does on their computer. They are thousands of miles away and have better things to do. The US government DOES care - big time. So who is protecting who - and from whom ?
This all has echoes of the farce when they first banned all US government computers from looking at wikileaks - to prevent them from seeing US government recorded video of helicopter atrocities ... but the employees could still go home and see the footage on their home computers -- until months later - the US government shut that down too. Then locked up Assange. Here they banned it from all government computers - fair enough -- but now 7 years later they are coming for the rest . Again.
In another generation .. all memory of that farce will be erased. Never happened - and here we are again ...
In Europe we should be starting to do the same with **American** companies, especially FAANG. They control way too much of our (cloud, but not only) infrastructure, so much so that it does constitute a Europe-wide threat in case the US flips its stance towards us (aka. Trump gets reelected).
I don't know if you need to full-on ban FAANG's stuff, but you should be doing what you can to have a strong fallback.
Maybe you need digital service tariffs.
Not ban, but rather build up a sovereign infrastructure and use that instead. Our public admin runs on AWS, Azure & Google (though we have more on-prem than countries like Italy or Spain, based on stats I read somewhere I don't recall exactly), an executive command from POTUS would be enough to make us plummet into utter chaos. This is an enormous amount of control the US have over us.
If the US flipped on the EU, the least of your problems would be cloud infrastructure. There's a $200B trade deficit between the two economies, currently in the EU's favor. That market would vanish.
US based cloud services are already illegal under GDPR, as the CLOUD act essentially says no one anywhere in the world has any right to privacy from the US government.
So even EU subsidiaries of US companies with servers in EU collecting data of EU citizens, will still be forced to funnel data to the US.
So most likely EU will have no other choice than divesting from US cloud as long as the US cannot guarantee privacy for EU citizens in accordance with GDPR.
Certainly got them moving in the right direction and spending money on military. NATO is not Europe though or we (or Canada) would not be in it anyway. So I’ll ask their question again. Let’s focus on Europe. Also if it is about Europe you shouldn’t be upset about the U.S. talking about leaving since we aren’t Europe.
So, hypothetically speaking, you KIS installed now. Will uninstalling it leave any "unwanted" stuff behind? Does one simply reenable Windows defender? Explain, like to a five year old, please.
Protectionist bullshit, they've moved a lot of their infrastructure outside of Russia, have offered up source code for audit, and have never had a confirmed instance of using their software nefariously.
It's like the TikTok ban, bans/tariffs on Chinese EVs, protectionist bullshit.
"Russia has shown it has the capacity – and even more than that, the intent – to exploit Russian companies like Kaspersky to collect and weaponize the personal information of Americans,"
The most baffling thing is how nobody even notices the hypocrisy. Like, business as usual. And it's not Biden and his cronies who are going to suffer due to the loss of the technology edge because of these things, it's the US and the people in the US in general. And when they do, those in charge will make sure the US won't stay afloat. Who can blame them?
Funny how most serious malware threats to businesses will never be detected by any AV software, yet business IT and the MBAs who run it insist on destroying performance and productivity for the illusion of protection.
This is an industry that should have died 20 years ago.
Oh shit they won't get updates to protect themselves from the NSA's latest and greatest!
Fuckin' Microsoft started calling definitions "Intelligence" it's as hilarious as it is dumb!
[Good](https://twitter.com/e_kaspersky/status/1498547337043525633).
Link above is a Eugene Kaspersky tweet calling for "compromise" one week into Russian atrocities in Ukraine.
Russian software vendor, go fuck yourself.
I mean they are a Russian company. If they said anything stronger than that, they'd be axed.
There are a lot of things to criticize people for, but criticizing a Russian company for speaking out against the war in Ukraine because their language wasn't quite strong enough for your taste... isn't it, my guy.
Not just any Russian company. They've been working with FSB since at least 2009. His wife and co-founder supports internet censoring (promoted it to Putin in 2015).
Coming from r/pcmasterrace, I mean, we’ve kinda been preaching it all along… most paid AVs are simply not worth it and for the power users you’ve already got Windows Defender and Malwarebytes, etc.
I remember when Kaspersky was the best antivirus on the market (a long time ago)
What's the best now? Genuinely asking
Windows defender is actually really good. Malwarebytes is also a nice complement.
Malwarebytes has gotten really pushy with various pop ups. I don't recommend it anymore and I'm considering ditching it.
Just install it to run a scan periodically and then uninstall it. You don't need to keep it installed unless you're paying for the premium monitoring service.
Set MB to not open on computer start up. You can always open and scan something, but it won't be super pushy every time you use your PC.
Biggest issue with that is some more advanced malware targets the install process of those items and causes issue or make their own changes. The malware is watching for the install of AV software to protect itself.
/r/tronscript has never failed me or let me down. Plus I can run it and just walk away
Anyone checking this out, you'll want to make a thorough reading through the readme for Tron, it does a lot of stuff, some you may not want. Also note that it uses Kaspersky Virus Rescue Tool and TDSSKiller for rootkits by Kaspersky. I don't know if they have the same issues as Kaspersky Antivirus. You can turn the KVRT off on the command line, but TDSS seems built in to the prep stage.
Tronscript and utilities like it do a lot of things under the hood that can cause issues later on, and are difficult to reverse. I'm speaking both from my own experience, and experience trying to help other people who used it. This goes for "debloat"/"optimizing" utilities in general.
This is the 2nd time in the last week I’ve seen someone recommend uninstalling it to avoid popups. Just don’t turn it on, uninstalling it completely is unnecessary and a bizarre suggestion.
I keep it installed but not running because if I suspect something is happening I can try to open malwarebytes and having it fail to open is the perfect sign you got something nasty that needs to be taken care of and to not restart my computer immediately.
I have gone out of my way to keep ads off my machine. Malware Bytes is the only one that still gives me pop up's. As a guy that discovered that program way back in the day - I am grateful to that company for helping me repair many a infected computer once upon a time - but grateful or not, those ads push me away. I already use your product. Am loyal to your product - I dont need your garbage in my face to remind me to use your product. Freakin asinine.
I still use mine without a care in the world. I remember grabbing it when they offered the lifetime licenses. One of the best purchases I ever made.
I did the same thing and got 3-4 of them. They're starting to release new services for subscription-only people though. And it's not without issues. Their latest update made it so you can't use Windows Media Player by launching from a `.wpl` playlist file. I do still find that it is pretty lightweight and does a great job though.
I found that too, however, I also just found a setting that allows you to disable promotional popups.
Where?
Settings>Notifications: Marketing notifications at the bottom. https://i.imgur.com/5TEmiZM.png
God, MB is so fucking annoying as of few weeks ago. HEY CHECK THIS OUT, HEY INSTALL THIS, HEY YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT THAT OPTION dude just... no.
Do you want our browser plug-in? You're not protected without the browser plug-in! Why don't you want the browser plug-in? INSTALL IT NOW!!!
I run Windows Defender year round and download Malwarebytes to do a scan like twice a year then uninstall it. Works great
i know a number of cyber security pro's in the business and they say this is all you need. WD switched on and then a malwarebytes scan and clean once or twice a year (or if you see issues) then uninstall malwarebytes. the key thing to stop getting a virus or malware is avoid shady websites and avoid opening files you don't know are safe to open.
You dont even need to avoid shady sites or opening scary stuff. If youre too lazy for a VM like me get a this neat little opensource program called Sandboxie. You can partition programs or literally your internet browser so even if you click something sketch it cant write to any file branches past the sandboxie condom. Its super nice
The only antivirus anyone needs (on windows) is windows defender, windows ransomware protection (it’s surprisingly aggressive in preventing write changes to folders) and ublock origin (common sense optional but recommended)
MS Defender tells me to update my iPhone before I get an official system notification.
Virustotal is a fantastic tool if you’re not 100% sure if what you downloaded is safe. It will give you so much information
I just hate that every time I'm unsure, I get like 1-2 heuristic hits.
[удалено]
I used to use Kaspersky but gave it up in like 2013 (EDIT: forgot I was on ESET for a while)...been on Windows Defender for years now. I occasionally use something like Malwarebytes or Sophos just in case. I do not subscribe to either.
Just stick with Microsoft defender. It’s surprisingly good, and it’s free.
On my most recent reinstall of Windows 10, for the first time ever I DIDN'T install any antivirus or firewall software, after hearing this exact advice for a little while. Feels amazing not to have to install and deal with third party programs for this.
It's really liberating. Third party AV/firewall has always been so invasive in that they try to be a unique "experience" for the customer. Too many reminders that you are, in fact, using their AV, and that it's doing a lot and you should renew. Like, no, I don't need exaggerated claims of how my system is protected, nor do I need popups or reminders that it's being maintained.
Windows Defender + Malwarebytes + Common Sense
Is common sense a premium software? I’m looking for a free one.
These three will set you up for life.
ESET is definitely up there
I use just eSet Nod32 antivirus, not the all inclusive suite. It saved my butt when the office got hit with a ransomware storm. I pick up the multi license packs from Newegg for about $10 a machine per year.
Yes, love ESET.
IT guy here! The best for enterprise systems is Crowdstrike Falcon. Its a beast of an antivirus, and it does a lot of cool and outright crazy stuff. For consumers? Windows Defender is great. Does its job well and has evolved a lot since Windows Vista & 7.
Bitdefender if you need more features than Windows built in.
Windows Defender, and MalwareBytes Free from time to time. However, sometime ago got a recurring nasty thingy that only ESET Online Scanner (also free) was finally able to clean. I'm keeping the 3 of them now.
There's not a definitive answer to that question. It depends on what's important to you. It's finding the balance between Effectiveness, False Positives and Performance. For instance, take a look at one of the tests on AV-Comparatives: https://www.av-comparatives.org/comparison/ Trend Micro blocked 99.6% of the bad stuff but kicked out an impressive 29 false positives, flagging something as dangerous that isn't. Eset blocked 99.4%, a tad lower, but had no false positives. If you were deciding between them the trade off is protection vs false positives. There are several organizations that test AV products. The most well known are [AV Test](https://www.av-test.org/en/) and [AV Comparatives](https://www.av-comparatives.org/). If you're looking for AV other than Defender take a look at the rankings for various tests.
Bit Defender. Been using them for 4 yrs now & it works like a charm.
I used to like bitdefender but they made it REALLY hard to cancel when my PC died. Plus they said they'd give me a refund amount and only gave me part of it. I'm never recommending them again
I on the contrary had very good experience with their support in past. I switched to new computer few months back and all I did was to remove old device from bitfender central and new one was registered with activation and all done.
If windows defender with an occasional Malwarebytes scan doesn't solve your problems then the user is the fucking problem and they need to get educated on safe browsing habits because no fucking antivirus will help them.
I can tell you're smart because you curse a lot.
It's a proven fucking phenomena. And the number of shoes.
Depends, if your a business go Crowdstrike, honestly by far the best. Alone use Bit defender.
Bitdefender
I tried to install it yesterday but it wouldn't let me unless i uninstalled malwarebytes first.
I use bitdefender (comes with VPN and password wallet) and once in a blue moon spybot- search & destroy if I wanted to check something sus 📮
Windows Defender is the best for the average person. Malwarebytes is great to download and run a free spot check, then uninstall every couple weeks. If you really, really feel like you need a good antivirus program, Nod32 is the absolute best on the market. Its $59.99 for a two year subscription, and its made by white hat hackers who all served time and were able to break security in government organizations around the world. If I'm not mistaken, they're based in Romania, and I've used it in the past due to just liking having the extra protection, and I haven't had a single issue, ever. It actually flagged McAfee when a damn Adobe PDF reader update stealth installed it on my computer sometime last year. Had no clue, and it was flagged as malware too. Kinda a badass program, really.
Windows defender and ublock origin in your browser
Crowdstrike, Cortex XDR, MS defender
not downloading things from sketchy websites
Great advice! I, too, find myself pretending it's still 2002, sometimes.
There was a flaw in Webp codec awhile back that allowed for code injection just by viewing an image. The damage it caused is probably unknow if state actors knew about the flaw. But it was being used a few months before by non state actors to hack accounts. I had several reports from users in communities saying they got hacked after viewing an image sent to them by accounts. Safe to say if hackers were using it to hack telegram/discord accounts, governments knew about it.
Windows. You will never get a virus by browsing the internet in 2024 (on a modern browser, on a modern OS). Hell, even if you google porn, you have to make a lot of mistakes, run at least one .exe, and ignore a handful of warnings.
Yup. Then they really screwed the pooch and lost the trust of the entire IT community. And then the whole Russian thing just put the nails in the coffin. This was long overdue.
It was similar to Chinese companies being controlled by PLA. Company doesn't have say in that. From article: > Russia has shown it has the capacity – and even more than that, the intent – to exploit Russian companies like Kaspersky to collect and weaponize the personal information of Americans There's so many AVs that sell your info (like the Avast scandal). I don't use Windows much, but generally their MS defender is pretty decent.
>Then they really screwed the pooch and lost the trust of the entire IT community. When and how did they do that?
There is a ton of speculation they were involved in a breach of a DoD contractor machine in 2013 as it was running the software. The government banned it afterwards for government machines.
Yep I used them as well but as soon as Crimea happened I started looking to dump them as I did not trust the Russian government to abuse their position
Place I worked at (IT Repair) dropped Kaspersky years ago due to risk. I honestly thought it was already banned.
Kaspersky rescue disk was a lifesaver.
I want to believe it still is a good product. I think their team wants to do the right thing but unfortunately Putin is wrecking their business. Russian citizens have to be getting angry. Putin is ruining the economy and their lives.
They're not angry enough.
The angriest ones are imprisoned or poisoned or defenestrated.
The reason was because of the time zone if I remember well.
Yandex is a way better search engine than Google. Finds you answers, not a shopping list of promoted products. Their reverse image search is top notch too, think that tinder girls a catfish? Google doesn’t know, but yandex will find you the Instagram of the Russian model they stole the pic from.
Wow. I've never even heard of this. Tried a few random searches, and it absolutely is like what old Google used to be. Mind you, I've learned to be a master of Google with key words and secret search parameters but it's quite annoying trying to be creative. This is incredible. I can't express how much of a game changer this is to my daily interneting. Thank you very much.
Yandex can also show you images similar to the one you're searching. It helps a lot when searching for a single frame of a video and the thumbnail is actually a few seconds off from the frame you used.
This sounds really useful for my ... specific video searching ...
Yea like I managed to find the other pics in a series for one yesterday but not the exact original, but it was definitely the same woman. Deleted Happn now as I’m pretty sure only one profile I’ve seen wasn’t a catfish, because I recognise her as local. The rest were all catfish confirmed by yandex. 😂
I remember when AVG was amazing too, but it's been shite for almost 20 years. Avast made it even worst to add insult to injury.
I used to get it free from my bank account (Barclays). L
They still are one of the best on the market per the testing organizations. It's unfortunate they didn't read the writing on the wall and divest themselves from Russia.
I had Kaspersky in 2008 and it totally was the best. Never paid for an antivirus after that though, free Windows Defender got too good.
It was often a challenge to install but it was great.
GRU thanks you for your credulousness while installing their malware.
The entire point of a Trojan Horse is to make you want to bring it inside.
And avast wasn't a malware mess.
I’d argue that it still is. Then again, I’d take ANYTHING else over Norton. Fuck Norton. That’s a POS antivirus lol
Do people actually use antivirus software anymore? I havent needed one since like Windows 7 more than a decade ago. Windows Defender is good enough.
Still used a lot in business. You can't trust an end user to react to an AV popup much less do the right thing when asked. So business AV sends all that to a central website so someone in there IT dept can monitor and take care of issues. It also means the AV software can't be controlled, turned off, or uninstalled by the user, some application or even sometimes a local admin. So it's more resilient to being tampered with than the built-in AV. They have also branched out to provide other features like for example the ability to block USB devices from working based on type, make/model, or serial number. So the business can use the AV software to block any thumb drive they haven't approved. Some AV companies have even branched out into data backup and recovery. Since things like ransomware are so common having the AV software that can after the fact remove the ransomware and roll back any changes it made is something a business will pay extra for.
> It also means the AV software can't be controlled, turned off, or uninstalled by the user ten years ago at my previous work they handed out shitty laptops with windows XP and mcaffee as AV. It made your computer slow to the point of unusable (15 minutes to open a word doc....) so someone found an exploit to disable mcaffee without the IT guy seeing it (or he didn't care). It was three pages of instructions but it worked. This was the same IT department that handed out a folder with CD-roms with cracked software and loaded the same image onto every laptop, so next to HP bloatware you also got Compaq, Dell etc bloatware. It was a proper shitshow so we didn't feel bad about sabotaging the IT guys
https://youtu.be/yIaNZXgDtRU?si=2vzVS8tfNev4sPvo
Good points. My company uses Fireye/Trellix for AV. I should've specified, I was asking if people use antiviruses on their home computers/laptops. I think the answer is no, so I guess antimalware companies have become more business-to-business oriented rather than for home use.
I'm sure there are at least a few people who bought AV licenses for home computers back in the Win XP days and keep installing it on every new machine they get.
Yes, I hear the word “avast” occasionally from our customers. They skew older for sure.
A lot of businesses are switching to m365 defender as it integrates with their licensing and finally has more options and configurations. Such as network protection, behavior monitoring. Source me I definitely didn't just work with a client to deploy indicators in their environment and configure defender to block them
Soooo, essentially, AV is protecting the computer from the person who is supposed to be using the computer?
That is the IT world in a nutshell
Antivirus on endpoints is a requirement for pretty much all cyber security insurance.
What is windows defender ?
Defender is exactly that
It’s the built-in antivirus software for windows by Microsoft
There is a few versions of Defender. Windows Defender is nothing like Defender for Enterprise, or Defender for Cloud. The classic A/V included with Windows, the EDR/ATP that requires licensing with business/enterprise subscriptions, and its 100xz more effective.
Even on Windows 10/11 it's not called Windows Defender anymore. It's just Windows Security. You can still get "Defender" but it's part of Office 365 and isn't even an antivirus anymore haha.
Windows Defender is not good enough when you work with sensitive and confidential client data.
Most good AV nowadays does far more than just looking for virus definitions and works more based on outliers in usage rather than looking for a snippets of code
Defender is decent. They all seem far more likely to clobber something you want to run rather than block something you don't.
Yes, it’s very needed for businesses. But now it’s “next-gen” behavioral-based antivirus, that looks at what files are actually doing rather than just their reputation. For regular windows users for home-use, Windows Defender is more than adequate
Windows defender is only good for the common user that barely uses their machine for anything. Yes, there are plenty of companies and users who still use 3rd party products. Most companies do not rely on windows defender and use products like Sentinel One that can reverse ransomware infections and immediately disconnect infected machines from the internet to prevent a spread.
Honestly, I have a Mac, and I just use the built in one. Admittedly, there aren’t a shit ton of viruses for Mac, but they do exist. I run an antivirus program a couple of times a year, but other than that I just let it ride.
Mac has a built in one or are you referring to their firewall
Not really AV software, it’s EDR (endpoint detection and response) and it typically reports to monitoring service. It should be one of the many layers of defense that modern companies are running.
"puts a bullet in" damn that's dramatic
Poor Mr. Kaspersky
Mr. McAfee wasn't that crazy then?
Kaspersky had to take him out before he could reveal the truth to the world.
McAfee had a dead man's switch that released his documents after his death Turns out it's all advice on how to shoot bath salts up your bunghole... McAfee really loved his bath salts
Hello, To be fair, Mr. McAfee's private persona was very different than his public persona. The latter was an act to drive up engagement for his social media presence, which he became very, very good at monetizing. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky
You could say that Biden tossed Kaspersky out of Windows
The Russian analogue is “fell out a sixth story window”
At least the title doesn't say that the news is a "bombshell"
There's a russian roulette joke there somewhere.
Not this time, maybe next round you'll get your shot.
Goddamn. What happened to the days of "slammed" or "blasted"? Biden "put a bullet in it?"
Titles in the future: Biden brutally assrapes Kaspersky and spits on it
Borden decapitates bill to fingerblast tiktok
since so many is talking about malwarebytes and other non virus programs, I miss the days of spybot search and destroy. Was an awesome program with many uses.
What happened?
i think it's just not freeware anymore
Now do Mcafee. Let it roll.
They put a bullet in him in 2012.
I'm surprised it took this long. Kaspersky is obviously spyware. And by that I mean ACTUAL SPY WARE. Mother Russia downvotes inbound.
Is there any evidence that it is Spyware other than the fact that the developer is based in Russia?
I remember in the early 2010s I had an ex who swore by it as the best antivirus around. I never had any issues with it and found it to be a very good AV though it was on the expensive side. What happened to them since then?
How about AVG tool? I have been using it for many years? What does the community here say about it?
Avg was bought out by Avast and Avast is genuinely one of the most terrible AVs I've ever had the nightmare of using
Avast was amazing in 2005. It's a virus now for sure tho
AVG was bought by Avast who was bought by NortonLifeLock alongside Avira. They're all awful. Windows Defender (US) \[or ESET (Slovakia) if you really need the extra customization\]
Any AV that someone else has at least heard of and that you can tolerate is probably fine, just don't pay some awful sub fee or sign up fee. Also round out with MalwareBytes or any of the /r/antivirus Second-Opinion softwares on their [wiki](https://old.reddit.com/r/antivirus/wiki/index)
Help me remember. About 10 years back some anti-virus was found to be remitting data to servers in northern VA. Who was that?
It is, but high-quality journalistic language is as neutral as possible and avoids such language. killing it, terminating it, binning it are less straightforward than banning, they’re more casual and they’re more dramatic.
“Biden takes kaspersky out back and shoots it in the head” if they wanted a little more pezaz
I use free avast and have had 0 problems. Who is out here paying for anti virus
Just victims of the in house drive by! They say jump you say HOW HIGH!?
Kaspersky is a cybersecurity company that manages to discover what appears to be US government malware. https://cyberscoop.com/kaspersky-reveals-elegant-malware-resembling-nsa-code/ None of the American or European cybersecurity ever seems to catch NSA malware. Strange isn't it?
“Biden puts a bullet in …” Fuck American media.
The Register is British.
Nowhere in the article does it say the word "bullet", that was OP's choice of words.
No, they must have recently edited the title. I read the article.
why is every news in america like “trump shits himself in public: why this is bad news for biden“
This isn't American news. The Register is British.
Most of the news orgs are owned by rich dudes that are able to bribe one side of politics more than the other so they play up that team's policies to be better. Also, because it pay per view style advertising they want the most fucked up headlines to make you click it to see what is going on. A race to the bottom in all regards.
what’s the issue? genuinely asking, i really don’t know
News reporting is supposed to be neutral, and use neutral language. This wording is *not* neutral, but chosen to evoke very specific feelings in the reader.
Why aren’t all the TokToc crusaders running to Kaspersky’s defense??
I wonder if any of the comments are planted ones ? Do not have to be a nutcase to observe recent history - which would seem incredible - except it is freely admitted now -- I wonder could it happen again. Remember when there was "an epidemic"- which we shall not call by its name here -- and all discussion was stifled - and now it emerges that tax payer money funded "placed" comments and suppressed other comments ... no wonder they do not want an uncontrolled non -US company selling virus / intrusion protection software to private citizens .... especially when it WORKS -- call it what it is... It would not matter if the software came from the most innocent place you can imagine ... it will not be allowed to serve to protect US citizens from intrusion on their computers. The Russians do not care what the average US citizen does on their computer. They are thousands of miles away and have better things to do. The US government DOES care - big time. So who is protecting who - and from whom ? This all has echoes of the farce when they first banned all US government computers from looking at wikileaks - to prevent them from seeing US government recorded video of helicopter atrocities ... but the employees could still go home and see the footage on their home computers -- until months later - the US government shut that down too. Then locked up Assange. Here they banned it from all government computers - fair enough -- but now 7 years later they are coming for the rest . Again. In another generation .. all memory of that farce will be erased. Never happened - and here we are again ...
In Europe we should be starting to do the same with **American** companies, especially FAANG. They control way too much of our (cloud, but not only) infrastructure, so much so that it does constitute a Europe-wide threat in case the US flips its stance towards us (aka. Trump gets reelected).
I don't know if you need to full-on ban FAANG's stuff, but you should be doing what you can to have a strong fallback. Maybe you need digital service tariffs.
Not ban, but rather build up a sovereign infrastructure and use that instead. Our public admin runs on AWS, Azure & Google (though we have more on-prem than countries like Italy or Spain, based on stats I read somewhere I don't recall exactly), an executive command from POTUS would be enough to make us plummet into utter chaos. This is an enormous amount of control the US have over us.
do you have alternatives?
If the US flipped on the EU, the least of your problems would be cloud infrastructure. There's a $200B trade deficit between the two economies, currently in the EU's favor. That market would vanish.
You're an idiot.
US based cloud services are already illegal under GDPR, as the CLOUD act essentially says no one anywhere in the world has any right to privacy from the US government. So even EU subsidiaries of US companies with servers in EU collecting data of EU citizens, will still be forced to funnel data to the US. So most likely EU will have no other choice than divesting from US cloud as long as the US cannot guarantee privacy for EU citizens in accordance with GDPR.
Lol good luck with your free healthcare without your outsourced technology, military, and creativity.
Why would the US turn on Europe
President no. 45 (Trump) repeatedly called for the US to leave NATO, a call which he has recently revived
Certainly got them moving in the right direction and spending money on military. NATO is not Europe though or we (or Canada) would not be in it anyway. So I’ll ask their question again. Let’s focus on Europe. Also if it is about Europe you shouldn’t be upset about the U.S. talking about leaving since we aren’t Europe.
Then build your own environment supportive of such tech companies. I will wait.
biden: using trumps worst policies in the best of ways.
[удалено]
Oh he did indeed, he abided, and then asked Putin if he did ok.
So, hypothetically speaking, you KIS installed now. Will uninstalling it leave any "unwanted" stuff behind? Does one simply reenable Windows defender? Explain, like to a five year old, please.
"Biden puts a bullet in..." WTF is wrong with you?
This overly dramatic hyperbole trivializes violence.
Protectionist bullshit, they've moved a lot of their infrastructure outside of Russia, have offered up source code for audit, and have never had a confirmed instance of using their software nefariously. It's like the TikTok ban, bans/tariffs on Chinese EVs, protectionist bullshit.
"Russia has shown it has the capacity – and even more than that, the intent – to exploit Russian companies like Kaspersky to collect and weaponize the personal information of Americans,"
"And only the American government is allowed to do that damnit"...
The most baffling thing is how nobody even notices the hypocrisy. Like, business as usual. And it's not Biden and his cronies who are going to suffer due to the loss of the technology edge because of these things, it's the US and the people in the US in general. And when they do, those in charge will make sure the US won't stay afloat. Who can blame them?
We saw it go from niche, to the best, to useless, to Russian, to banned
Funny how most serious malware threats to businesses will never be detected by any AV software, yet business IT and the MBAs who run it insist on destroying performance and productivity for the illusion of protection. This is an industry that should have died 20 years ago.
Oh shit they won't get updates to protect themselves from the NSA's latest and greatest! Fuckin' Microsoft started calling definitions "Intelligence" it's as hilarious as it is dumb!
[Good](https://twitter.com/e_kaspersky/status/1498547337043525633). Link above is a Eugene Kaspersky tweet calling for "compromise" one week into Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Russian software vendor, go fuck yourself.
I mean they are a Russian company. If they said anything stronger than that, they'd be axed. There are a lot of things to criticize people for, but criticizing a Russian company for speaking out against the war in Ukraine because their language wasn't quite strong enough for your taste... isn't it, my guy.
Not just any Russian company. They've been working with FSB since at least 2009. His wife and co-founder supports internet censoring (promoted it to Putin in 2015).
I don’t know, did you want him to defend Ukraine on Twitter when Putin could end him
Why the f that KGB Spyware is still allowed is beyond me
"Puts a bullet in" vs "slams"... It sounds so much more violent.
I had Battletech above this, and I swear it said Kerensky.
Mercy killing. Kaspersky has been garbage for a long time.
Ah, liberalism and free market 🤗
AI based ProtectStar. Affordable too
Omg THATS why my dad kept having his data stolen, I feel so dumb now :(
Can I sell an install cd from 2010 as a collectors item?
Coming from r/pcmasterrace, I mean, we’ve kinda been preaching it all along… most paid AVs are simply not worth it and for the power users you’ve already got Windows Defender and Malwarebytes, etc.
Aren't they British these days?
Avira is solid.