Korean Job Discussion Forums

[yfb]

Plugged in a foreign USB drive into your computer? Oops, Autorun.inf is parsed to automatically run that hidden program on that USB drive, now you're infected.

Visit any site with Flash on? Oh, there's a flash exploit, now you're infected.

View PDF files? Oops, you were socially engineered to open a PDF file with a JavaScript exploit, welcome to the botnet.

Use Internet Explorer? Oh, you're so smart for turning off Windows Update, hope you enjoy your machine being owned by months-old exploits.

Turned off that firewall? Now you don't know who (or what) is phoning home.

And I agree with the other posters. v3 is worse than useless, because it lulls users into a false sense of security with the constant popups. Case in point: my co-worker's flash drive had at least 3 different worms on it. Her v3 machine did absolutely nothing to it. My MSE machine went nuts.

Don't be stupid. Run MSE and have a firewall going. Don't think just because you're smart at computers you're immune.

[Hyeon Een]

My work computer currently has:

Daum Cleaner (beta)
AlYak (egg medicine)
Kapersky antivirus
Safenet Agent

All running at once.

And If I fire up internet explorer (which I try not to, but I have to to access the uni's website) there are half a dozen stupid toolbars installed too.

This is a 10 year old computer too. It sure is speedy. Not.

[vDroop]

Wow this thread is still going!

Viruses happen to everyone, even machine builders. Flash will own you if you haven't updated it and there's a new exploit.

Use MSE, you can turn off the scheduled auto scan so you won't even notice it running. It will still pick up threats as they come in. Run a full scan manually once a month while you take a shower or something.

If you run a hacked windows and can't validate (by the way if it's properly hacked your windows will pass Microsoft's validation tool) then use "Avast!"

[Sector7G]

[archmagos]

Concern for computer security, like many other things, is a matter of degree. The short version is that most people simply do not care and are prepared to invest faith in a �trusted� solution.

While I have found this odd to reconcile against the same importance that many people might have for giving out their credit card details, the perceived difficulties against learning anything new acts a strong incentive for people to seek a �silver bullet� (anti-virus software, avoiding certain sites etc). Add to this a perception that if something is new/commercially supported/well marketed, then you essentially have a market for people trying to buy their way out an annoyance (not a risk, as if you were really concerned about this you'd adjust your behaviour to deal with the risk).

Naturally this situation was made much worse by the fact that Windows was (and still is) the dominant desktop OS. Somebody who actually wanted to discover what a virus/malware-infected program actually did on windows would have a long and painful few hours of investigation. A message like "this program may harm your computer" does not provide any useful information, as the user has already decided to make changes by running the program.

While windows 7 has made improvements in security, this does nothing to counteract the arguably more popular trend of targeting the user inside the "safer" parts of the internet (eg when logged into facebook or internet banking). This means that even a naive user who was running a secure openbsd box is in no better position than an unpatched windows xp user, as the attacker is targeting vulnerabilities in a website and then relying on social engineering to convince the user that what they are seeing is safe. Attackers have realised that careless is operating system independent (Mac OSX, linux or otherwise).

Much in the same way that phreakers in the 70/80s could easily exploit the phone network, there is no silver bullet defence against exploiting the user�s trust.

[Morticae]

My 7 year old laptop was able to run antivirus programs and not have any issues of performance loss. They run quietly these days. Granted, it never scanned while I was doing anything or I would have noticed it.

I put one on my new laptop and it can do a full system scan while I am playing SC2 on ultimate settings and I have no issues. Gotta love the i7's!

I don't need it necessarily, but if you do a lot of internet downloading-- especially questionable content, then it is for the best. Why am I downloading questionable content? That's my business.

[Underwaterbob]

What's the best free anti-virus these days? I noticed AVG doesn't have a completely free version anymore.

[archmagos]

[canada42]

[archmagos]