Xero's Computer Hygiene Class

[Blizzard]

I used to use Avira and I'm not really satisfied. It keep annoying me with popup windows even when I turn off all their annoying stuff through registry entries and program execution prevention. I have to admit that I am actually pretty satisfied with Microsoft Security Essentials. I've been using it for over a year and a half now and I've had no problems. I did get a few false positives, but I like the fact that it doesn't start to panic for every "suspicious" file I put on my laptop. It looks like MS finally did something right. MSE is definitely a good free anti-virus solution if you are using a legal Windows copy (I think MSE doesn't work on pirated Windows copies).

[ArcaneAlchemy]

Here's how it works. There is an initial 'public' test. They did so poorly in that test that they didn't even bother following up in 'private' testing. The latter is where I would do a penetration test with various tools and techniques, as well as performance and some other things. It was to improve the effectiveness of their product. So, in short, the suck so bad that they didn't even want to improve their product, which in turn will make them suck indefinitely.

@Blizzard Yeah dude, MSE is pretty bad ass actually. They tend to do very well and you are spot on regarding the false positives. Especially with analyzing files. A lot of these vendors tend to rate positives for all sorts of stupid reasons, like for a poor whitelisting hash feed or unknown authorship.

[Blizzard]

A couple of months ago when I visited my sister in Graz, one of her friends (who should get his IT master very soon) told me they had a class about that kind of stuff. Believe it or not, but the "advanced" algorithms that they used are laughable. Usually malware has a certain type of code signature or calls that the anti-virus software detects and then blocks. You can circumvent that stuff by doing stuff as simple as adding redundant if-blocks in your code. This usually changes the compiled code signature enough to avoid detection.
So for vendors of software that have crappy detection algorithms it's usually easier to simply be aggressive in detection patterns than to crate a good algorithm for detection.

[ArcaneAlchemy]

lol amen. It's like I said to a vendor one time regarding a HIPS product.. "So, you're saying that I'll have clean water if I just turn the faucet off?"

[Heretic86]

They told me my computer has a virus and it needs to be cleaned so I put it in the bathtub and washed it with No More Tears Baby Soap but now it wont turn on, are you stupid computer guys down again and when are you gunna fix your damn problems?  Im sick and tired of your service not working right.  And for the record, I've been trying to download this Red Ink for the last 45 minutes on my phone but it wont work right when are you gunna fix your crappy service so I can download my Ink?

/total_sarcasm