VoodooShield/Cyberlock

For me is a huge having VS whitelist in cloud. I don't know the technical details behind it but for those who have a good internet speed ( I have 150 Mbps) to have an option to not have the whitelist on the machine, and VS to stay connected with the clould all the time (if won't slow down VS), and for those who have wireless or etc to have it as it is now (machine + cloud).

Sure this is not a must, is more like a caprice but you need to think in the future, and cloud is the big thing right now.

 

Dan,
how VS got its name?
Why Voodoo?

 

the developers are magicians

 

Are we going to turn to zombies?

 

Shadow Defender 1.1.0.325

 

Why not the latest version?

 

imagine with shadow defender and voodooshield I will be worse than a sombie lol

 

Because 1.1.0.325 has worked flawlessly and without fail now for years.

 

Actually, I had another product called VoodooShare, that was a cloud storage software that basically created links from your desktop to your friends desktop so you could share files. It was kind of similar to dropbox. But the expenses were massive and a lot of competitors entered the market, so it was hard to really gain some traction.

I also am a computer consultant during the day, and about 30-40% of my business used to be removing viruses, malware and unwanted software from computers. It was the part of my job that I disliked the most, viruses are just a pain, and they do a lot of damage, not to mention steal peoples identity.

One night, over 2 years ago, I was up at 3am removing the same virus from 2 different laptops from 2 different clients. It was one of the viruses that would kill anything you tried to start. So I would try to bring up the task manager, and the virus would kill the TM, and say that it was infected with a virus, when it really was not. I had always wondered if there was a very simple but effective way to stop most or all viruses... something that was not a constant filter that somewhat works (traditional blackist antivirus). As the virus kept killing everything I would try to start, I thought to myself, "wait a minute... all I have to do is do what they are doing to me, to them... but just do it first".

Then I realized that it could never work to put that powerful of a lock on a system, the system would never function correctly if you blocked everything. Then a few seconds later I thought of putting a shield on the desktop so that the user can turn it on and off really quick. A few seconds later, I realized it would be cool to have the software toggle between OFF and ON, depending on whether the computer had a browser or email client running or not. So it kind of all came to me at once... after 13 years of thinking about it on occasion.

I called a developer that I somewhat knew through a friend and told him the idea. After I told him the idea, he paused for about 10 seconds and then said "You know what... I think that would work".

At the time, neither Dywayne or I had ever heard the term anti executable, which if you had to classify VS, that would probably be the best category. So I was totally unfamiliar with the AE's that were out at the time until someone from wilders emailed us and told us about the discussion at wilders. I joined the discussion and looked at all of the AE's that were available at the time to make sure our idea was not too similar to anything else that was currently available. Thankfully it wasn't.

So VoodooShield was born. We could not think of a name, so I took the Voodoo from VoodooShare, killed the VoodooShare Project, and took the Shield name from the desktop shield idea, and the name just stuck. Our patent and trademark attorneys actually had an issue with us using the term Voodoo, since there were other trademarks that used that name. Luckily for us, the previous owner of the trademark was abandoning the name, so we applied for it and it was issued 6 months or so later. We were happy because we spent 3 months trying to come up with a name. I will try to remember some of the names that we almost called it, but it has been awhile. Some people do not like the word Voodoo, but we just think of it as a fun name, kind of magical. Also, initially, the VS shield was going to disappear to the tray icon when it turned OFF. Then it would reappear when it turned ON. So that kind of had a Voodoo feel to it.

Anyway, that is the entire history of VS! I will save this just in case someone asks again .

 

Exactly

 

I will pretend that was an actual compliment .

 

hehe .

 

Thanks for explaining it but not to sure of some points.

It seems to be that everything on the machine prior to installing VS is treated as trusted irrespective of whether it is installed or needs no installation to run, and the protection you are offering is just between the computer and the LAN/Internet.

So you could summarise it as "From here on in you are protected from the WWW."

 

Dan,
thanks for sharing this story with us...

 

Yes, people ask us about this all the time. Maybe at some point VirusTotal will allow us to offer a realtime scanner to remove all of the existing malware.

Like I always tell people... If you have the cold, you should still protect yourself from getting the flu. See my point?

And in all fairness, this applies to VS along with all other similar products.

Thank you for the question though!

 

Definitely, thank you for spending a half day reading it . Sorry, I didn't know it was going to be that long.

 

Dan,
I like the concept of VoodooShield but how is it different than ExeRadarPro? Also, I dislike the requirement of installing Net Framework 3.5. I'm on Win 8 pro 64 bit. Do you plan to upgrade VoodooShield to Net Framework 4 at some point?

Thanks.

Bob

 

What do you think about Smart Mode? I have not been using it, but my understanding is VS's will enable it's protection as soon as the user begins performing any task that could infect their computer. I prefer using always on myself, but I believe Smart Mode will make it easier to use VS for less experienced users.

 

We can fix this one way or another... Please turn VS OFF during this test. Either put it in OFF (Training) Mode, or just exit VS for a couple of minutes.

Then if you go to the Windows Start Button and choose Run. Can you try to Open "www.google.com" (without the quotes).

It is supposed to open your default browser and load google.

If it does not, can you please go to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Default Programs\Set Associations

And verify that .htm and .html are set to open in your default browser.

If this does not help, please let me know!

 

Thank you, we appreciate that! Both VS and ERP have proprietary features that the other cannot have. For VS, it is mainly the Smart Mode training / desktop shield gadget / application shielding (toggling with web browser and email client) functionality. We believe this makes the anti executable more user friendly, especially for less advanced computer users. Obviously we cannot talk too much about proprietary features, but that somewhat gives you an idea. It is like Coke VS Pepsi... both are fine products, but which do you prefer?

We could create a special Windows 8 version of VS that did not activate .net 3.5, but then we would have to maintain 2 versions and this would create a lot of complications. Actually, when you install VS on a Windows 8 computer, it doesn't actually install .net 3.5, it just activates it. So we thought it it was better to leave it like it is. When Windows 9 comes out, if the user is forced to install .net 3.5 (not simply activate it), we will definitely have 2 versions.

 

Ah I see. Thanks.

 

The reason for this is because VS disabled UAC.

 

I am not a VoodooShield user, but I certainly enjoyed the story, Dan
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=2251048&postcount=1384

 

And also that I've installed it in the SUA. When I've installed it in the Admin. acc. everything was OK.