Malware Removal Question

Are there any tests or discussions that show how the different anti viruses and anti spywares fare in actual removal of malware?
Any direction would help.

 

Hi!

Each malware is specific. Something is written in Run keys, something as DLL is loaded in active processes, rootkits,... Then removing is bigger problem.

 

Hi Lukas K.
That's for sure. I asked my question because after three years of being off the Internet, I got infected by spyware from a freeware disc. An anti spyware that I had always used in the past detected the infection, but after I downloaded a different AS, it found all kinds of traces of the spyware left. So I'm just curious as to whether there are tests that measure the different programs' success or failure at removal.
Thanks for the response.

 

I don't really know about this, since I have very limited experience in cleaning up from just a few different malwares, but as stated above, each is different. One application may be very good at cleaning all the garbage from a few types whilst only dealing to the main exe's of others.
I'd imagine that this would make testing for their abilities (a) rather long, involved, and complex, if a reasonably large sample representative of todays common threats were used, and (b) a snapshot in time, valid for not very long, but able to give an indication.
A google search of a few different threats, if they are reasonably well known, often leads to sites (such as Symantec's) with quite complete information regarding what the malware does, what keys are changed, where it hides itself. Did a manual cleanup of one of these, once, it was a long and somewhat tedious business, but ultimately satisfying.
To hope that an antispyware (etc) type application is going to be able to thoroughly clean them all is probably unrealistic.

 

Thanks Tarq57. Makes good sense to me. I was wondering why I couldn't seem to find anything on the search engines. Now I know!