Study: If you havent been infected by malware in the last 2 years

My last question: it was a drive-by (unlikely, I think that you have an up-to-date machine) or the "idiot" was tricked to install the malware (social engineering)?

 

No infections
Security - Firefox, DeepFreeze, Netgear DG834, Acronis
Habits - 100 + e-mails per day, Bank and Financial work sites, No P2P, no warez,
no known dark side just dull work and play machines

 

I use my computer for email, some word processing, database record keeping, maintaining websites for local groups and keeping a group's accounts up to date. I occasionally IM.

Surfing habits include coming to forums like this one, using news sites such as the BBC, researching encyclopaedic content and visiting film/TV related sites. I also read security blogs.

I'm using Kaspersky Internet Security. Firefox is my browser with the Adblock Plus extension added. The only other "security" addition is SpywareBlaster.

 

I don't think that's the aim. As I am oft to say, much of what we do with our computers accounts to some extent how lucky one is or isn't in getting malware whether they're protected or not. The examples given thus far show this very well.

 

Never been infected in two years-put it down to attempting to use commonsense regarding sites and a basic security setup,plus the feeling that this whole security paranoia is overblown as regards the home user.

My usage is is ordinary boring surfing,plus some important business usage also.

 

Well definitions differ of course, but many would say that drivesby can and do involve social engineering, but i presume by driveby you refer to infections that occur automatically without any user interaction?

I was wondering the same thing as well. Since he was playing flash games, the greatest possibility is a problem with the flash plugin.

The fact is I specifically updated flash plugin, just before i left the machine..... Then again, I remember that at that period of time, there was supposedly this vulnerability for the flash plugin that had no patches yet....

So maybe i did get hit by a zero day!!!

 

Haven't been infected for a lot more than the last two years.I have used many different security applications .But at last I settled down,what I use is in my signature.I must admit that I am a careful user I do not visit XXX sites.
For the next 2 weeks I am sure I will not be infected How? I am very busy translating Online Armor so I even dont use internet more than 5 minutes.

 

Correct If you're prompted to install a rogue codec or a rogue scanner, it becomes social engineering.

Hmmm, it surely warrants further research. I bet on social engineering throu rotating ads.

 

I've been infected, but it has been a looong time since I got infected just surfing. Last time it was on 2004, when I was surfing a warez site.
Surfing habits: research for university, newspaper reading, financial trading and banking, wilders, youtube, the usual random surfing from one page to another, and some porn (I stick to a couple of sites that have never infected me in more than 7 years, just the expected tracking cookie, wich gets deleted after I close my browser). Since 2004 I don't go to warez/crack sites anymore.

I've had some infections, but they had come via P2P, and mainly it happened because of me beeing in a hurry and skipping my standart checking proceeding (including on-demand scan, virustotal scan, running the first time with returnil enabled and watching what it does. If a suspicious program asks for a reset to complete instalation, it gets deleted, no exceptions).

That said, since I stopped searching for cracks, warez, keygens, etc a few years ago, my infection rate went from +/- 7 a year to less than 1 per year.