when was the last time anyone found a real live virus ?

Thats a ballzy statement. I use Windowblinds and I downloaded a skin from Wincustomize. A Star Wars skin somebody uploaded. It was packaged with a virus. I was using AVG at the time so it did nothing. Wish I had my NOD32 back then. I had to reformat.

 

The last time I got a real virus, and my AV alerted me? That wood be 1999.

 

Few years ago when I was surfing the dark side of the net. Played with fire and got burned - was handled fine, just needed some work.

Previous to that was on my father's machine about a decade ago where he called me in to do some surgery on his virus mangled machine.

Other than those two incidents (in two decades), everything else has been work-related. At work it's usually once a week that I have to handle malware, or direct someone else to handle it.

 

Today. A friend got infected and his computer started sending malware through MSN messenger.

 

The last time I recall getting infected unintentionally was in 1999, good old Happy99. God those were the days... Since I was running NT it didn't really matter though, no Winsock hooking and no registry changes

 

Both NAV and KAV have, over the years, trapped real viri/worms, most in email,which they silently delete, so I am not aware of how many, but alsi some nasty Worms once in a while.

The cost of running AV software is small compared with the cost of recovering from an attack by malware.

 

I would be interested in knowing how many of those in emails would have been obvious without AV to tell you: unknown sender, obvious come-ons to click, etc. See my post here for examples.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=1139309#post1139309

On the other hand, how many were viruses that were embedded in legitimate messages/attachments from known sources?

You would have to trap/quarantine them to check. It would be an interesting experiment!


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rich

 

might be..you might control what you open but that doesn't mean that all ppl do you do not use msn?are you sure everyone on your list is clean?

as for virii kav detected a couple on a project that a friend from university gave me on his flash drive

 

Just think of how fewer infections would occur if people did control what they opened!

I'm not sure what you are getting at here...

By "your list" do you imply "trusted sources?" What types of malware do you have in mind that might come from someone on your list?

Flash drive exploits are a different topic than email.


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rich

 

This one post sums it all up in my view.

 

Last time was in September of this year. It was a Java Script virus from a place I thought was safe. Trend Micro caught it though and quaratined it though.

 

Ohhh...a few months ago PC 2 had a "sleeping" trojan caught and destroyed during a regular scan. Before that it's been a couple of years ago...also a trojan, caught and killed, to my knowledge both of these did not harm me. That is not to say they would not have.

PC 1 had the worst one. I never could identify this one it was at least three years ago. I lost the AV definition data base and ZoneAlarm was killed off. Sound had failed to operate and I was dropping time on the clock like mad (first clue somethng not right). Then the key board stopped accepting commands. This all happened quickly. I was new then and panicked. I used system restore and went back one week before my mouse stopped working (that was my thought at the time, hell with figuring out what's going on) . I then loaded up and fresh retail box of Norton AV 2003 I think was the version, did a full scan and came up clean . Of course I now know system restore is a poor choice solution but I was a newbie and panicked what can I say. That was when I had factory ME on PC 1.

I joined Wilders shortly around that time.

 

Last night for me. I had to find out what I had and here it is. Made me second guess my decision to buy Kaspersky since it did not catch it and it is not a new virus. I dont believe its old now. I think its new a new variant.

 

I had to clean the RBot worm from my computer last weekend. I spotted the startup item in msconfig and realised it was probably a virus, then looked it up on Google, saw it was to do with the Rbot worm and used the Rbot removal tool by Sophos which worked great. It turned out the main .exe infected file had been deleted, and it was just 3 registry entries left.

I also had to clean out several trojans and a keylogger on my brothers PC -- I had backed up all his files onto my external hard-drive, so that too was infected.
He was using AVG and it had missed the lot of them. I installed Avira alongside SUPERAntiSpyware and it cleaned the lot of them.

Infections are pretty rare for me nowadays. I do get a few in the emails, but they are easy to spot and clean. Firefox with Noscript has blocked many websites from installing malware.

 

Statistically, Viruses and Worms are less frequent
than other types of Malware (i.e.Trojans, adware, trackware, spyware etc.)
I've seen no Viruses in my setup. However, I've seen some Spyware.
At least, this was what my AV and AS scanners used to tell me.
[Keep aside the long Updating and Scanning sessions, the False Positives,
and the need to use at least two (2) scanners (i.e. Regular + On Demand)
for AV and AS protection].

- Which Security setup is more protected against Viruses and other Malware?

(a) The one that uses AV and AS scanners (+Firewall/HIPS).

(b) The one that uses Sandboxes and ISR software (+Firewall/HIPS).

"Hint": People, who use (b), use (a) to test (b), and prove that (b) is more reliable than (a).

 

Yep, something like 90% of everything Dr.Web adds to databases are trojans, trojan downloaders, backdoors, trojan droppers, etc.

 

If we refer to virus only, that was the bugger for me too. If i had a diskette drive, i could probably resurrect the thing.
Ruined my LL gameplay

 

About 3 years ago I was following a link and clicked on a site that turned out to be porn. Immediately my AV picked up 4 viruses. I was able to delete them all. I use MailWasher to filter my e-mail. I can see my e-mails before they are accepted on my pc, and I can delete them in MW. I've had this program for quite a few years and never been stung.

 

Same in Brazil... :|

 

3+ years. Viruses are old, today its all about worms/trojans/rootkits etc.

 

(didnt know whether to start a new thread or resurrect an old thread)

@ Dread - good sophos link there - found desc. of the WMA.Wimad Trojan- i app. picked up version L
yesterday on Limewire - searching for an old song(PacMan Fever), and "Top of Charts" shows up in search results- has a license that WMP asks you to download if you try to play "Top of Charts", where it apparently starts?....

if you have Lime wire, search on "Top Charts" and there are several variant
files along the lines of Top of Charts 2003
Top of Charts 2004
Top of Charts 2005

VirusTotal reported anywhere from 2 to 5 positive on any of these files,
so im wondering if its a real trojan or not??
anyone on here testing these things right now?

 

i had some annoying vundo stuff about 5 months ago and it took me forever to get every file. im still not sure if it's all gone.

wow...my new bitdefender is scanning and so far there's 40 infected files. i hope it's nothing big.

 

No viruses or fps on 77 computers running 16 hours a day since the 1980s. My view is that much of the virus fear is unfounded promoted by the marketing of AV firms aided by the paranoia of many users. There is a real threat-it is just much lower than many want you to believe.

 

I agree completely - which is why I asked the question originally. I realize now that I really should also have asked how the virus or any nasty for that matter got onto the machine ? Unless deliberately testing or going to known "bad places" I would have thought it quite difficult to get contaminated.

all this talk of obscure dangers is very interesting in one sense but unlikely to be of any practical benefit. I wonder if those who have been contaminated recently
might share their experiences so as to help others avoid doing the same ?

 

I thought that was the reason for the thread. Of course we will get the usual cadre of AV company employees who will tell us right here that doom and gloom is just ahead- but then I have been hearing that since the first AV was put on the market.