Do people still get viruses?

I haven't been infected since around the year 2000? the most common infections I find at work from customers are adware infections. I have dealt with the old style police/fbi ransom-ware from customers years ago but that seems to of died out. I have noticed that the uninstallers for the adware will install 6x more adware if you do not untick the boxes during uninstalling. If i got £1 for every time I heard "I have no idea how I got that virus i never install anything" I would have much more money now.
stopping criminals producing ransom ware is easy backup data and refuse to pay the ransom.

 

As mentioned before, viruses are out of fashion.
One can get adware, spyware, password-stealers, ransomware and spam-bots, latter often in combination with rootkits.
Adware is on most, if not any machine, that comes in for service.

Most, if not all common AVs and Security-suits do not protect from adware and spyware.
So i give them a thumbs down!

 

An opinion but viruses typically don't generate income, right? They just scratch a malicious itch. I see a lot of times people using the terms "virus" and "malware" interchangeably. Even "adware virus." I guess you have to see what the definition and purposes of a virus are versus the more profitable malware (I consider adware to be pretty mal frequently.)

 

This might be of interest to some.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/threats

Also:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd632948.aspx

And:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware

http://www.malwaretruth.com/the-list-of-malware-types/

 

So can you share what do you use to effectively clean up your customers' computers from adware and spyware? Member Iodore seems to have the same experience with his customers, I was under the impression that anti spyware/adware were now covered by traditional AVs.

 

So what would you recommend?

 

I think nowadays computer worms that have the viral attribute of self-propagating are the trend versus a virus affecting a single computer unless it's targeted specifically for destruction. I read about the latest item here on Wilders, specifically regarding the Stuxnet worm. Also there was the payload-bearing worm utilized in the WannaCry campaign. I can't think of any computer viruses but Cerber, Zeus, Crossrider, etc are instantly recognizable. Standalone viruses--? not economical, just malicious.

 

I normally find a combonation of mbam and adwcleaner normally cleans up adware quite well. i normaly use the chrome cleanup tool as well as adware normally infects chrome with dodgy extensions.

 

Thank you for your reply. After reading this thread I've got a bit anxious and ran MBAM 2/3 versions as well as Hitman Pro and your suggestion of Chrome cleanup... Well last time I ran scanners was more than a year ago and nothing was ever found, this time around is the same old nothing.

I don't know whether Sandboxie or Avira is responsible for my pristine machines, but I sure think the average Joe has certainly developed a talent to get infected...

 

I got a false positive... KAV detected an Adobe Cleaner Tool as a Trojan.

I had to disable KAV to run the cleaner tool. AV protection is far from perfect!

 

You can set an exclusion for it. If you set Kasperksy to prompt you for an action when a threat is found, I think there is the option to whitelist the file.

 

First I run tfc.exe, to kick out some of the bad stuff, and make the following scans faster.
Second I run Kaspersky TDSSKiller, to make sure no rootkit hides stuff.
Third I run ZAM, to clean serious infections, searchpage modifications and hijacks.
Fourth I run ADWCleaner, to remove adware and similar threats.
Fifths I run MBAM, to clean remaining stuff and lots of registry leftovers.
Sixth I run the local installed AV, to make sure no alert pops up, when the customer runs his machine at home.

In doubt there is anything malicious left, I run various other scans, and in further doubt, I wipe the disc, and setup the OS.

 

Thanks Hiltihome, I've downloaded the scanners you've suggested and one Win 10 machine has already been scanned with a clean bill of health. Even though I trust Sandboxie and Avira together, a yearly scan is not a waste of time just in case...

 

You sound positively paranoid. You're in more danger of encountering false alarms than real malware threats.

 

That would be paranoid on one's own machine, but it is perfectly right when dealing with customers' infected machines... I've scanned two Win 10 CU machines with Hiltihome's suggestions out of curiosity, no malware detection and no FPs...

 

In case ransomware is present, I do not recommend to run tfc.exe, or try to clean the machine.
Either I replace the disk, or make a raw copy, or image, depending on the customers willing to pay for.
Disc, or image is stored, depending on customers choice....
Sometimes weeks, or month later, there comes up a possibility to recover data...

 

Data recovery is expensive with no guarantee of success. That's why people should back up data they can't afford to lose.

 

I haven't had one ever since McAfee & Norton were really the only 2 choices for AV's. The biggest threat these days is fingerprinting. It's no longer necessarily a good idea to go tweaking your about:config (Firefox users) to death and using a bunch of add-on's. And if you're not using a popular OS+browser/version then it's a good idea to tweak your useragent string to make it appear as if you are.

And if using TOR resist the urge to tweak the about:config to make it stronger, like by changing the referrer to "0" for example, or adding other add-ons to it. Keep it the way it comes by default, and for the love of god don't change the default screen size either.

This is what will get you nabbed these days if you're doing something you shouldn't be doing on the web.

 

I haven't been infected by malware in around 6 years. Only false positives. I guess I have been lucky.

 

Perhaps you are not click happy, and that's the reason why. If you take some care when online, it's hard to get infected.

 

It isn't luck, its skill. You know what you are doing and are safe and as long as you continue how you are , you will hopefully never end up infected.

 

I suppose it's a bit of both. I do unsafe searching, but I don't download or click anything I shouldn't. Ad block software helps.

 

OOI which ad blocker do you use? I use uBlock for Chrome + hosts modification and works well for me usually

 

uBlock Origin does the job for me.