Archive for the ‘Antispyware’ Category

Antivirus and Antispyware

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

At Blizzard Computers we test and then use the same software and hardware on our own computers that we sell. We have tried numerous antivirus applications rarely finding a better performing or better value than CA antivirus until we started testing BitDefender Antivirus 2008. By the time we started selling and recommending this product they came out with a new version 2009. What a nightmare! We have given numerous refunds and sent the balance of our BitDefender 2009 stock back to the distributor for a credit. For now we highly recommend that you avoid upgrading from BitDefender AV 2008 to the disastrous 2009 version. It has mail sending issues with Microsoft Outlook where outgoing mail with attachments will stay in the outbox and continue to send over and over again. It never removes completely when you perform an uninstall, you have to download the Bitdefender uninstall tool or Windows Security Center will continue to tell you Bitdefender is not functioning properly. There is a noticeable performance decrease over version 2008 and plenty of issues where it just reports that it is not functioning or it won’t update. It also has an issue where Vista doesn’t recognize it as a valid antispyware application.
We were lucky that we had started testing AVG Network Edition for our business clients and since the release of AVG 8 it has proved to be an exceptional antivirus and antispyware application. For personal use you can’t really beat the free AVG antivirus since version 8 was released. For our business clients AVG Network Edition is very impressive with a minimal footprint and the remote administration utility is, in my opinion, superior and much easier to use than the equivalent Computer Associates remote administration application. Now AVG 8.5 has been released and you can imagine my hesitation to adopt an upgrade to a product we have just started selling and recommending after the nightmare that was BitDefender 2009. Good news! AVG 8.5 is working just as well as version 8 and it has some new antispyware features that should help prevent future spyware methods of infection. AVG continues to focus on minimal use of resources. We love Malwarebytes for spyware removal and we are excited that we have actually seen AVG 8.5 find some items that Malwarebytes had missed.
So, why did we quit using CA Antivirus? Well, mainly because it was an antivirus only. We would get customers complaining when they would get infected with spyware and we constantly found ourselves explaining that it wasn’t an antispyware application and that Windows Defender was the product that they were using that did not stop the spyware infection. We could not argue that CA AV did not stop the malware though. We do believe that in today’s security environment an antivirus program should be antimalware and include prevention and cure for both virus and spyware types of malware. Computer Associates wants you to pay extra for spyware protection. Their offering still seems to be the core application that was Pest Patrol. We were never impressed with Pest Patrol’s cleaning ability, its use of resources, or the user interface.

If you are infected with malware we highly recommend that you remove the product(s) that failed you, install AVG 8.5 and then install, update and scan your computer with Malwarebytes. Happy cleaning!

—DB

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BitDefender 2009 Settings

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

We’ve been recommending and selling BitDefender Antivirus for some time now, but we’ve found it has its quirks.

Recently we’ve been getting some fairly widespread complaints about sending and receiving multiple duplicate emails. It wasn’t long before we determined that everybody that was sending out duplicates was a customer using BitDefender 2009! The culprit? The outgoing email scanner. Evidently, the scanner would hold up the email client, and the client would simply try sending the message again until it went through. An outgoing email scanner isn’t especially important, considering you must already be infected if you’re sending infected files. So off it went; one by one customers disabled the outgoing email scanner, and one-by-one customers stopped sending duplicate emails.

Despite being an excellent antivirus and antispyware, that’s not the only setting we’ve found to be better off disabled. Identity control has caused some problems as well, as it gets overzealous with blocking changes the registry without even giving the user a choice. I’ve seen Windows service packs fail to install because BitDefender blocked necessary registry changes. The downside of this is that such registry control is sure to reduce your chance of getting infected with spyware, but breaking Windows is a rather unwanted side effect. So off it goes.

Automatic game mode, while good in theory, is somewhat obnoxious as well. “Game mode” in BitDefender disables all BitDefender popups and alerts, and sets BitDefender real-time protection level to “permissive”. When running games in full-screen mode, this will prevent BitDefender popping up and taking focus away from the game, which, as a gamer, I know is very annoying. The problem with automatic game mode is that it detects all full-screen applications, including screen savers, as a game and prompts you to add it to the automatic game mode list. So off it goes.

BitDefender also includes an automatic anti-phishing add-on for web browsers, but so does Internet Explorer 7. Being a browser add-on, it can slow down the browser, and as it scans every page you visit, it slows down your web browsing. So off it goes.

With these configuration changes, BitDefender should run smoothly and problem-free.

While I’m on the subject, I haven’t yet made any ground on getting Windows Vista’s Security Center to recognize BitDefender’s anti-spyware component. Bummer!

update: BitDefender 2009 is not recommended.

—CB

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Useful Tools

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

All the time, I see customers bringing their computers into the shop because of a spyware infection. No matter if it’s a minor or major infection, at least half of them have AdAware and/or Spybot - Search & Destroy installed.

Think about that for a moment. For years, these have been two of the most recommended tools on the internet for spyware removal, and yet they obviously don’t do a very good job of it! I suppose this is similar to Norton or McAfee products. They’re nigh on useless, but by having their name out there–and in the case of Norton and McAfee, coming preinstalled on many PCs–many think that being the most popular means they’re also the best.

There was a time when malware cleanup involved running at least three tools, often more, and still required booting in safe mode, manually finding and deleting infected files, and often times going through some complicated processes to give yourself the ability to delete the file. Then, when you think it’s all done, it just rewrites itself.

For a time, SUPERAntiSpyware was my preferred spyware removal tool, but not only was its scanner fairly slow, many times it still didn’t catch everything, and the tedium of manual cleanup remained. Spyware cleanup became such a timesink that as a business, our option was to have a computer on the bench for hours and charge far less, therefore losing money, or charge the customer very high fees for a spyware cleanup. Instead, it became policy that if we couldn’t fix it with SUPER, the customer had the choice of having the hard drive wiped and Windows reinstalled (saving any data the customer needs, of course) or living with the still-infected computer.

A lot of computers got a fresh install of Windows during that period.

Then we found MalwareBytes’ AntiMalware. I can’t praise this application enough. The scanner is fast, definition updates are frequent, and it comes in a very small package–as of this writing, 2.31 MB.

False antiviruses, trojans, spyware browser toolbars; you name it, it kills it. I’ve never been disappointed. I couldn’t even guess how much time this program has saved us, or the amount of money it’s saved our customers. I still sometimes make use of HijackThis, and more recently AutoRuns (a very useful tool in other situations as well), but these are practically formalities. MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware’s quick scan is fast and very effective so long as it has the most recent updates, which are frequent. If you buy it for $24.95, you can get real-time protection, but I have yet to try it, so I can’t attest to it as a proactive solution. Either way, it’s about worth $24.95.

For post-infection malware removal, don’t waste your time with other tools. MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware is where it’s at.

—CB

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