Has Malware Ever Disabled Your Security Software?

[Rampastein]

Happened once in 2006, the directory and drivers of the security software got wiped out entirely. A couple of months later I found a dozen trojans and a rootkit from the machine and got interested about security. Haven't got infected since.

[Page42]

A few times I encountered installation and updating problems with various AVs*. It made me suspicious... made me wonder if malware might be the cause of it. But I blamed it on the software, then I blamed it on the software the 2nd time, then I discovered a MS Fixit tool that cured whatever was wrong. But it did seem coincidental that I couldn't update and/or install a security program.

[poison]

Not in the last couple of years since self-protection on most seems to do a decent job but yes malware has disabled my security software before. AV anyway.. I don't recall it ever disabling my 3rd party FW etc.

[jadinolf]

Never happened to me.

[russland]

My setup has not been disabled to date, but I have encountered only A very few times when malware has tried to install on my systems. All instances were identified and stopped by my defence setup(so far so good).

[marc57]

Back about 8 years ago I had Malware *

[moontan]

yes, although it's been a few years.

i remember fixing a friend's computer *
the malware had disabled the AV that was in their machine.

[noone_particular]

In post #4, I said that it hadn't happened on my equipment. I'd forgotten about the early days when I used a conventional security suite, a combined AV, firewall, privacy protecting, popup blocking, everything plus the kitchen sink bloated mess. I was searching Google for sites about a subject that should have been no problems. The search led to a site that started opening tons of popups. They blew right thru the suites popup blocker. A few seconds later, the AV component crashed, followed by the rest of the suite. Shortly afterwards, the entire PC crashed. Upon reboot, the suites AV tells me I'm infected and it can't remove it.

That big name security suite was the only security app I've ever purchased and it was removed a few months after I installed it.

[Cutting_Edgetech]

Malware has never made it past my security setup that i'm aware of.

[trismegistos]

For 5 years I have not been using some AV resident or real-time scanners, I never had malware disabled nor bypassed HIPS even with deliberate malware executions and leaktestings.

But pre-HIPS, I have lots of AV bypasses and one time malware completely messed up the partition.

[lurker20]

I had a chance to work on few machines as a tech and I noticed few malwares exploited im age file exequtions and had a huge list of security software process list. It successfully prevented running processes listed there.

[xxJackxx]

Yes, absolutely.

[TonyW]

No. Hardly get any malware.

[d0t]

Funny, I voted no and yesterday my sister called me saying she got a virus when she tried to download a movie.

It was a fake AV, don't remember the name now but she couldn't run any exe file, because she would get a message "this file is infected". She had Avira free, but I couldn't open it 'cause of the same message.

All I had to do was boot in safe mode and run Kaspersky Virus removal tool ehe

[HKEY1952]

Thank You for your participation in this Poll:

Has Malware Ever Disabled Your Security Software?

It was interesting reading about all the different experiences with Malware.


Regards,
HKEY1952