Please help settle an argument about defence

[mysts]

Which of the following machines is best defended overall.

Machine A: malwarebytes-antimalware
comodo-firewall
avg-antivirus

Machine B: bitdefender total security 2013

[aedipuss]

hard to say. it would depend on what the attack vector was. i prefer to have a single program as running multiple will bog down a machine. the current bitdefender gets good reviews and includes everything needed.

• Antivirus Plus: Antivirus and Antispyware, Bitdefender Autopilot, Bitdefender Safepay, USB Immunizer, Enhanced MyBitdefender dashboard, Search Advisor, Social Network Protection, Personal Data Filter, Antiphishing, Scan Dispatcher
• Internet Security: Antispam, Enhanced Parental Control, Two-way firewall, File Shredder
• Total Security: Bitdefender Safebox, Anti Theft, File Encryption, Tune-up

personally i don't like malwarebytes running all the time as it is a resource hog and is that paid or free? also is the avg paid or free version?





i'd go with b.

[mysts]

Thanks for your reply. Machine A is all free stuff. Should have mentioned that I suppose.

[Nelson37]

Whichever one is NOT being used by an unsupervised teen-age boy.

[sanlyn]

Free software won't cut it. They're band-aids. You didn't think the maker would give away their best product for free, did you? Freebies are last year's version or older. As for AVG: A couple years back I got a message during a background scan that atapi.sys was a virus and did I want to remove it ? ? ("Quarantine recommended !!"). Try booting Windows without atapi.sys installed, and you'll think twice. A couple months later I'm told that VirtualDub.exe is a virus. I put the filename on AVG's ignore list, but I was unable to run VirtualDub or Avisynth scripts until I removed AVG and replaced it with something more intelligent.

The last time I used AVG was a couple of years ago. Using my laptop and online, I was hit by a piece of adware that downloaded two trojans and a TDSS rootkit infection. I was informed of an infection by the sudden appearance of the notorious fake virus warnings, and then AVG warned me that a dangerous trojan downloader had been ""discovered" on my system after I had been seeing the trojan's phony warnings for 10 minutes. Really? Letting you know that you're infected and then telling you that the infection can't be repaired is not my ideal AV program. Haven't used AVG anywhere on any of my computers again. And haven't been infected, either.

Of the several dozen PC's I repaired in my sideline during the last 2 years, I recall the following a/v programs being installed on customer's PC's on which I found anywhere from a handful to several hundred infected files, bad registry entries, and/or rootkits: Norton AntiVirus, Norton Internet Security, Norton 360, BitDefender, Avira, McAfee, AOL Protecftion (are they kidding? McAfee in disguise), CA Antivirus, Avast, Webroot, TrendMicro, anything from Microsoft. My record so far for the number of infections found and removed from a PC using a combination of third-party scanners including MBAM, ESET Online Scanner and ComboFix was over 700-plus bad files and registry entries, not including the TDSS-4 rootkit found by Kaspersky TDSSKiller and finally cleaned up by ComboFix. The antivirus the user had installed was Webroot and Norton 360 and Windows Defender on a Vista machine.

There is no 100% safety factor with any av program out there today. But there is definitely some ineffective protection out there. The worst products seem to be the ones that advertise the loudest.

[hech54]

malwarebytes-antimalware

MalwareBytes isn't really "defense" is it? SuperAntiSpyware is defense since it blocks stuff from getting at you.

[hech54]

Free software won't cut it.

WRONG.
Avast Free Home - it's all I've used for YEARS on both this computer and my wife's laptop. NEVER had any kind of malicious software get on to my computer(s).
That along with SuperAntiSpyware(also FREE) are my only "defensive" softwares.

[lordsmurf]

MalwareBytes isn't really "defense" is it?

The Pro version is proactive. I use it on one computer.
MS has some proactive freebies now, too. I use those on desktops, laptops, and servers.

As for AVG: A couple years back I got a message during a background scan that atapi.sys was a virus and did I want to remove it

To be blunt, AVG can go **** itself.
I'm still annoyed that it would delete Goldwave and ATI MMC without so much as a warning.
To say I was pissed would be an understatement.
Adding insult to injury, it was set to not auto-delete "malware" but did so anyway.
This was a few years back. But it made such a mess that I will never again install it.
A virus is less damaging.

comodo-firewall

Comodo is good, but it also has a tendency to do unwanted things, including resource hogging.
It's not something to be run on a video work computer.

[jman98]

Unfortunately AVG's time has come and gone. I haven't recommended it for several years now. Avast is one replacement choice. I've had lordsmurt's issue in the past with AVG where it deleted something that was not infected and gave no warning before doing it.

If you have Win 7 then the Windows firewall that comes with it is good enough in my opinion. I have not personally tested the firewalls that come with Vista or Win 8. Win 8 should be OK with the Windows firewall. Not sure about Vista. I used to use Zone Alarm in the past and I still think it's a good product.

[Hoser Rob]

Whichever one is NOT being used by an unsupervised teen-age boy.

That's what I was thinking too ...

The other big mistake is to think you can use some antimalware program and think you'll be immune to security problems. All antivirus programs will still let some things through.

And then you have javascript attacks to think about. You could use the Noscript plugin in firefox but it's kind of daunting for many users and fiddly for more knowledgeable ones.

I wouldn't use multiple programs from different vendors simultaneously. In addition to hogging resources they can conflict with one another.

MAlwarebytes is a good on demand malware scanner, and there are others.

I only found superantispyware to be useful to get rid of trackers, but it's worth using.

Microsoft security essentials is actually very good, and it, in combination with the windows firewall, is a lot better integrated with the os than most others. It's also one of the best at not giving you false positives.

IMHO the best security solution is Linux (where almost no one bothers using antivirus software) and Noscript and still being damn careful what you click on. Even in linux I scan everything I download.

[ranchhand]

And then you have javascript attacks to think about. You could use the Noscript plugin in firefox but it's kind of daunting for many users and fiddly for more knowledgeable ones.

I agree that Noscript is somewhat daunting in the beginning, but it's way better than wasting a day cleaning your system of an ActiveX injected virus. I can't understand why Noscript has so many pointless options, they really need to prune it down. I have been running it for a year, and now I don't even notice it anymore. After a few days I discovered that I only use two "allow" choices and ignore the others. Don't forget, when you designate "allow all this page" option for one of your trusted websites, Noscript will no longer bother you with that site.

[lordsmurf]

NoScript has some stubborn developers.

The one "feature" that pisses me off the most is that it blocks fonts by default. It's blocking valid CSS that hasn't got jack crap to do with JavaScript. NS is just as bad as IE in this regard, because you have to fail-safe test site designs to degrade gracefully for the goobers that haven't noticed this useless "feature" in NS and turned it off.

It also does some blocking based on content size, so anything considered "ads" are removed, even when it's not actually an ad. The ideas that "ads = evil" is also harmful to site owners. Servers aren't free.

______

The ideal fix is to switch to a like desktop OS like Xubuntu. It acts a lot like Mac OS X, and you only need minimal Linux understanding to know what's going on. What I like is that the apt-get GUI makes it so easy to update applications that even retired parents can do it. All in a single process, unlike Windows or even Mac OS X.

I've swapped all personal computers to Xubuntu and Mint this year. "Can I use your computer real quick?" is now something I can answer "yes" to, and hand them a laptop. No worries.

[redwudz]

I've been happy enough with Avast free and Comodo firewall free. Comodo is a bit of PITA to use, but with a bit of tuning it can be controlled. I like it because Windows does nothing to prevent your PC from 'phoning home' and transferring sensitive info out on the net. Comodo has often blocked access from my PC to unknown locations that I don't approve of. Windows Defender and Windows firewall are mostly useless, IMO.

I did used to install other anti-malware programs but the above software seems to work well. True, I don't go into the 'back alleys' of the internet anymore, so I don't need much in the way of advanced protection. But in the last four of five years, with over 8 PCs used, no successful malware attacks. That's my proof of performance.

[Cornucopia]

Ditto with Avast. Light, Up-to-date, unobtrusive, actually finds & stops true positives with few false positives. Oh yeah, and it's free.
There's been a whole slew of Pcs I have cleaned up recently that gave them a 75% speed boost just by uninstalling Symantec (with Cleanwipe) and replacing with Avast. And some immediately found existing viruses upon first reboot scan (which SAC must have been ignoring).

Scott

[hello_hello]

Free software won't cut it.

WRONG.
Avast Free Home - it's all I've used for YEARS on both this computer and my wife's laptop. NEVER had any kind of malicious software get on to my computer(s).
That along with SuperAntiSpyware(also FREE) are my only "defensive" softwares.

I could say a good defence is not to run any "defensive" software, given I've not run any for a couple of years without any malicious software getting onto my computer either.

Mind you I'd agree, I don't believe "free" necessarily means "inferior". Free versions of antivirus software, for example, mightn't have all of the bloat the "paid" versions can, but I've not seen any evidence to suggest the "paid" versions somehow use better antivirus definitions than their free counterparts.

Anyway, when it comes to antivirus, Avira usually has the best detection rates, followed by Avast, followed by AVG, according to avcomparatives.

[Cornucopia]

Well, nothing's "100%" effective, whether you're online or not, whether you have AV/AM running or not. Only way I know of to make your system completely (or nearly) bulletproof is to: Install from scratch (known clean, good) your core OS & apps, create a copy of the good, clean boot drive to a Read-only disc/DiscImage, upon every reboot - first restore from the Readonly. Could be done with a VM or swappable drives, network, etc.

That way, you are always clean whenever you boot, regardless of what may have happened in the previous session. But that's alot of work to set up correctly - too much for most users.

Scott