Do you ever run a computer without an antivirus and/or firewall?

[LosOjos]

I'm actually astounded at the blasé attitude some of you have towards viruses...

[maniac]

I have a few machines without AV on here, but they are all dedicated devices like Digital Signage that don't get the oppertunity to pick up nasties as easily.

 

I never used to run AV on my home machine, but then about 2 or 3 months after completeing a very large assignment (which luckily had been submited) I lost the entire contents of my hard drive to a virus in such a way that it was un-recoverable as well. I well and truly learnt my lesson and have run AV ever since.

 

I thought, just like some of you here, that I was tech savvy enough to avoid all the pitfalls that usually lead to machine contracting a virus, and that AV software was a waste of money. Thign is it's well worth remembering that some genuine viruses are so subtle that the only way you'll notice they're on your machine is when they've done whatever nasty deed it is they were designed to do. It my case, the program was slowly overwriting portions of my drive with blank space in such a way that evetually the whole thing got corrupted beyond repair. The first I noticed of this was when windows started behaving improperly, and eventually crashed and wouldn't boot. File recoverey software proved fruitless as the virus had done a lovely job of destroying the data on the drive, so throrough that a lot of data destruction companies would have been quite proud I think.

Edited November 2, 2010 by maniac

[mattx]

I'm actually astounded at the blasé attitude some of you have towards viruses...

 

Really ? A great deal of it is AV vendors etc just desperate to sell you their products to make money.

 

George Smith 'Virus Creation Labs: A Journey into the Underground' (VX heavens)

 

Is a good read.

 

I've had to clear up mess etc in the past because of basically user stupidity but for IT savy people I personally think it's un-necessary. For my mum and non IT savy people, it's vital.

[pete]

The reason I asked this question is because on a local forum related to computers/tech (but aimed at home users) people 'claiming' to be clued up in IT are offering the advice to home users not to run antiviruses or firewalls as they slow your computer down and you don't really need them. When I pointed this out otherwise I got shouted down for doing so.

 

Ah, you've encountered "black viper" syndrome. Misinformation, fanboyism and "experts".

[mattx]

Ah, you've encountered "black viper" syndrome. Misinformation, fanboyism and "experts".

 

Or as I call it - FAS - False Authority Syndrome

 

False Authority Syndrome

[LosOjos]

Really ? A great deal of it is AV vendors etc just desperate to sell you their products to make money.

 

George Smith 'Virus Creation Labs: A Journey into the Underground' (VX heavens)

 

Is a good read.

 

I've had to clear up mess etc in the past because of basically user stupidity but for IT savy people I personally think it's un-necessary. For my mum and non IT savy people, it's vital.

 

Granted, a lot of them are like the WWW-Mafia, scaring you in to paying them protection money, but there some incredibly effective free solutions out there too. I recommend avast.

[dhicks]

How is it viruses spread these days? If it's through applications being copied, installed or downloaded, you could avoid that issue by not letting the OS install any applications (or, iPad-style, only let approved applications be installed). If it's via security holes in the OS then you could make sure your OS stays up-to-date properly. Are there any other ways a virus infects a computer?

 

--

David Hicks

[LosOjos]

The problem I have with the "I only install from trusted sources" approach, is that you have no way of being certain that the sources security has been breached, thus allowing that installer you're placing your trust in to inject a virus as it goes. And does anybodies PC really slow down that much that they're willing to take the risk?

 

AVG used to slow my PC down a lot: that was the software's fault, not just because it was antivirus. That is why I now use avast as my run time AV, and I don't notice any considerable slow down.

[elsiegee40]

I solved the problem with AV slowing my machine down by using MSE at home. It's pretty lightweight.

 

Having had to unpick a few nasties in my time, never on my kit thankfully, I prefer to have AV on all kit at home that connects to the internet. It's not as if I run any 'heavy duty' software that needs every bit of help it can have to run at a decent speed.

 

I'm a mere mortal so therefore it is possible my kit will pick a virus and frankly I spend far too much time fixing stuff at work to want to spend my free time doing the same.

[rad]

I dont but do know a small company with 5 pc's and no antivirus. God knows what is on there pc's

[sidewinder]

I always do. I'm fairly confident that I wouldnt pick anything up but why take the risk when an AV program is free and doesnt take up too much resources.

I dont on my Macs though...I realise I should but I dont really know any if I'm honest (in the same vain as AVG)

[sparkeh]

I dont on my Macs though...I realise I should but I dont really know any if I'm honest (in the same vain as AVG)

 

Sophos for Mac any good for you?

[Arthur]

The problem I have with the "I only install from trusted sources" approach, is that you have no way of being certain that the sources security has been breached, thus allowing that installer you're placing your trust in to inject a virus as it goes. And does anybodies PC really slow down that much that they're willing to take the risk?

Exactly! You can't trust any websites these days.

 

http://mini.adsl24.co.uk/images/forums/BadSite.png

[GrumbleDook]

ClamXav for my Macs, mainly to catch viruses and nasty code in documents which pass through my systems on to elsewhere. Remember that even if they don't kill your machine because you are patched / using a low risk OS* then it may kill others. I catch about 4 a month at the moment.

 

*discussion of the lowness of risk of the relevant OSes have been done to death, but no OS is going to be safe forever!

[imiddleton25]

we dont run any AV on our virtual desktops as they are read only, the servers do have Av so any files being saved are scanned also email and internet is scanned at the boundry

[MkII]

ESET is now out for Macs too.

[EduTech]

Nope, All of my computers/servers at home are Installed with ESET NOD 32 Anti-Virus.

 

Admittidly i have run a desktop in the past which no anti-virus on (just firewall) and i never had any virus's etc.

 

James.

[Elison]

If you browse clean sites then you won't hv to worry about virus attacks.

But what if those "trusted" sites are hacked too? you will never know what hackers can think out.....Sometimes even owners of websites can not know about whats going on...As I have already said, one of my colleagues cought few viruses on his internet provider's site. He spent then 2 days to clean all system with AVZ, dr.web and Ksapersky. So in my opinion you can get virus anywhere in the internet. Or from your friend's usb stick.....

.

[mac_shinobi]

ClamXav for my Macs, mainly to catch viruses and nasty code in documents which pass through my systems on to elsewhere. Remember that even if they don't kill your machine because you are patched / using a low risk OS* then it may kill others. I catch about 4 a month at the moment.

 

*discussion of the lowness of risk of the relevant OSes have been done to death, but no OS is going to be safe forever!

 

I've done the same and have never found anything and although it does not run in the background like other AV products I run it about once a week and since having it for over 2 years have never found anything

[Arthur]

If you browse clean sites then you won't hv to worry about virus attacks.

As mentioned above, this is not true at all.

 

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/nyt-revamps-online-ad-sales-after-malware-scam/

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090913/home-delivery-the-new-york-times-serves-up-some-malware/

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=29590544&postcount=225

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10466044-245.html

http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2008/02/more-rogue-dns-servers-serving-up-poisonous-content.ars

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2007/12/dns-poisoning-used-to-redirect-unwitting-surfers.ars

[LosOjos]

I also find the idea of running your virus scan weekly rather than having real time protection. A week is plenty of time for a virus to infiltrate your system and wreak havoc.

[SteveBentley]

 

The only reason they are 'less prone' is that nobody can be bothered to target a minority of users when they have so many Windows noobs to choose from.

 

It's also because the security model is better - few *nix users use root routinely, yet most home users are on administrator accounts all the time.

[psydii]

Sorry, had a long tube journey to write this, got a bit carried away.

 

Real-Time scanning is essential

---------------------------------------------

There is a good analogy with vaccination programmes and also condom use vs abstinence around this topic.

 

Decent AV blocks generic attacks. I've seen a piece of malware slip though LGfL mail filter, past Symantec MSMSE into my mail store and onto my unpatched (we always run a few days behind the releases) clients, where it was identified by Sophos EndPoint Security as suspicious and blocked. A few hours later both Symantec and Sophos had specific detection for it and the mailstores cleaned themselves up.

 

Nothing to see here move along.

 

It would have been a major issue without the client protection.

 

You cannot trust everyone to be as careful as you, thus by allowing your computer to interact with others (websites, friends, email, even yourself when you are in a hurry) you are exposing it to risk. c.f issues with abstinence programmes in fight against STDs.

 

Running machines without AV also allows for pools of undetected infection, which makes it harder to prevent and deal with outbreaks. Your internet connected PC (even if it is behind a firewall) makes you a global citizen, and you have a shared responsibility to the health of your neighbours computer (metaphorically). Yes sometimes AV product cause collateral damage, however globally this is has less of an impact than running no AV at all.

 

For those who don't run AV on their CCTV, IPTV, Cashless Catering, Printers, Mobiles, switches. I suggest you consider the trend recently - infrastructure is the next target, and while it may be that national institutions will bear the brunt of the directed attacks, once released, self-replicating code could go anywhere.

 

 

The myth of Mac and Linux

--------------------------------------

Historically MS-DOS and later, Windows, would execute any code for anyone with full privileges, often simply inserting a disk would be enough. This is why UNIX/MACOS and RISCOS users used to be smug. MAC and RISCOS users were really only protected by their platform's minority status. This all changed about ten years ago with OS X, GNOME/KDE, JavaScript and Flash. However the unix based platforms still do not generally give Joe User permission to edit system files, and thus persistent malware infections are rare. However both UNIX-like systems and WinNT based systems have flaws that allow malicious code to break into the kernel and once there your machine is compromised completely, and only a full offline scan can give you any chance to clean up your system.

 

There is a reason that the really bad stuff are called root-kits not SYSTEM-kits.

 

P.

[mac_shinobi]

Does Eset for mac or anything else provide a method to boot your mac into a pre boot enviroment to run an AV / Malware scan and also recover data, I know when you do a re install it gives you the chance to install keeping the existing installation which then goes into a folder but then if the files are infected, does that mean the OS gets re infected again ??

[fafster]

I run MS Security Essentials on my home machines, and recommend it to anyone else that asks. It seems a hell of a lot less bloated than most other products.