Virus & malware creators need to be tortured!

I had to reinstall my operating system a couple of weeks ago because of a virus that had first infested my system two years ago. The reason: I had failed to scan an external hard drive that I hadn't used since then.

Capital punishment, I say!
 
Wow, we've finally discovered what it takes to bring out the nasty, in Chapelgrove!

I feel you. But try to see the larger positive, in the wonderful world of malcode: like horrible pathogens in the biological world, electronic viruses etc (and the countermeasures developed to deal with them) contribute to advancing techniques in coding that benefit useful software, in the computer world.

But yeah, some days I indulge in medieval torture fantasies the likes of which would make Tarantino shudder, watching the vault fill up on my workstation...
 
Nice try Max. But if there were no viruses and no malware, then I wouldn't need antivirus and anti-spyware programs running, which only slow my computer down. How much faster would everything be? Heaven on earth!

Evil people ruin everything.
 
I read somewhere that the guy who invented Malware is an Australian and is now a multi millionaire. He was also on the Australian aerials team at the Olympics.

the more you know.
 
Use Malwarebytes anti-malware program, and lavasoft ad-aware. Between those two, they've pretty much gotten rid of any virus or spyware I've ever encountered.
 
backup your data, c'mon people!

like the experts say:


"If your data does not exist in THREE separate places then it doesn't exist at all"

backing up doesn't have to be fiddly, if you set up automated backup process then you can fire and forget.

Keep a clean Ghosted Image of your workstation/PC, always have your data separated.

When disaster strikes you will only be minutes away from working again, no need for Anti-virus or Anti Malware scans.

Having a hard-drive crash, PC blow up or virus infection is an utter pain, BUT the joy and RELIEF you feel when you see your data again is pure pleasure I an personally attest to.
 
Anhar Miah said:
backup your data, c'mon people!

like the experts say:


"If your data does not exist in THREE separate places then it doesn't exist at all"

backing up doesn't have to be fiddly, if you set up automated backup process then you can fire and forget.

Keep a clean Ghosted Image of your workstation/PC, always have your data separated.

When disaster strikes you will only be minutes away from working again, no need for Anti-virus or Anti Malware scans.

Having a hard-drive crash, PC blow up or virus infection is an utter pain, BUT the joy and RELIEF you feel when you see your data again is pure pleasure I an personally attest to.
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Anhar, nobody said they don't have stuff backed up. But backups aren't substitutes for antivirus and antimalware programs. Nobody wants to have to reload their hard drive every other day. As you say, it's an utter pain.

Wiping and reloading is a last resort -- and sometimes even that won't get rid of the problem.
 
Well...a low-level reformat will fix almost anything that isn't a physical issue with the drive itself...
 
I hear your pain Chapelgrove, I've been there.

After burning my hands too many times I decided to wear gloves.

All I'm saying is a Ghosted Image + (automatic) backup data, you could have been up an running in minutes not hours, but I do concede your right it's not the cure.

If you want a cure then the root is to find the virus vectors:

(1) Internet
(2) Removable media (e.g external USB, CDs, floppy)

stay protected:

(a) Firewall
(b) AV (I use AVG free, its fairly lightweight vs Norton and others)
(c) Keep OS updated

(I'm sure you do all those things anyway)

Most AV can be set to scan on on load, when a new usb thumb drive is popped in it will autoscan, this probably stops 99% of infections at that point.

If your really paranoid, like I was a while back, get hold of an old PC, put it on the network , create a virtual PC inside it and then remote into it for all your surfing / test software installs needs.

The PC sandbox saved my life, I was messing around with some assembly code, thankfully I ran it inside the sandbox, which screwed it pretty bad.

its the Perfect sandbox, if you fry it, no probs most virtual PC have snapshot modes, you can either go back (a few clicks) or re-spawn a new virtual PC.

In the last two years I have had, count them 1 minor trojan threat, which AVG picked up, I run full scan on all my 6 machines, they where clean.
 
Anhar Miah said:
All I'm saying is a Ghosted Image + (automatic) backup data, you could have been up an running in minutes not hours...
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The only way to automatically backup a drive is to keep the backup drive connected to the computer, in which case the virus could propagate itself to the backup drive too. When you reloaded your data back onto your newly wiped drive, the virus would go right back to doing what it was doing.

Nothing is perfect, unfortunately. Which is why these worthless people should be rounded up and put on an island somewhere. Without computers, of course. :)
 
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chapelgrovefilms said:
The only way to automatically backup a drive is to keep the backup drive connected to the computer, in which case the virus could propagate itself to the backup drive too. When you reloaded your data back onto your newly wiped drive, the virus would go right back to doing what it was doing.

Nothing is perfect, unfortunately. Which is why these worthless people should be rounded up and put on an island somewhere. Without computers, of course. :)
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agreed:


Yes thats certainly possible, however that would suggest that your AV didn't pick it up in the first place!

In that case you would have a wider issue.

Many people do not separate their data from there rest of the PC storage. By forcing yourself to keep data organised and in one place means its easier to back up, but also easier to scan (AV) e.g. real time scanning as well as full scan.

Right now I have a combination of 6 way peer to peer data sync + per PC daily mirror backup to a central NAS, plus nightly back up of the NAS to my offsite server.

That means in theory at least I have 12 versions of my data. And of course if I did get an infection that's 6 (+1 server) that could possibly be at risk.

Which I do worry about, but in all the time I've had this system in place I've had that one instance when my software workstation reported a Trojan that got picked up via the daily AV scan. I immediately kicked off a scan on the other machines , they all came back clean.



But again I agree, virus writers (black hats) should be given the option for their talents to be turned to white hats, or be forced to live on an Island without computers!
 
Anhar Miah said:
Yes thats certainly possible, however that would suggest that your AV didn't pick it up in the first place!
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But Anhar, I was referencing your original statement -- "...no need for Anti-virus or Anti Malware scans." Which followed my statement that antivirus and anti-malware programs slow the computer down, and if we just got rid of the people who create viruses and malware then we wouldn't need such programs. I took your comments to mean if we all just kept a ghosted image and did regular backups, then we wouldn't need to use antivirus or anti-malware programs. Did I misunderstand?
 
Since 'get rid of people who create viruses' is right up there with 'square the circle' it doesn't really sound like a practicable solution.
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
But Anhar, I was referencing your original statement -- "...no need for Anti-virus or Anti Malware scans." Which followed my statement that antivirus and anti-malware programs slow the computer down, and if we just got rid of the people who create viruses and malware then we wouldn't need such programs. I took your comments to mean if we all just kept a ghosted image and did regular backups, then we wouldn't need to use antivirus or anti-malware programs. Did I misunderstand?
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In theory YES,

how

some enterprise corporations with hundreds of PC to administrator, use applications like DeepFreeze (tm).

What systems like DeepFreeze do is on every log in it re-creates the entire OS (actually restores from a fixed copy), there is ZERO way of infecting these machines because they effectively get wiped.

Well what about data you say?

thats what is held and maintained separately on the network. Even if data did get infected it would never spread within the network because the OS is effectively stateless.

using Ghosting is a Poor mans version of DeepFreeze, the general idea is that once you have a snapshot of a clean OS, thats the state you can almost instantly go back to and in this case no need for AV scans.

The problem lies in the possibility of data getting infected.

There is no way around this. But its a game of probability,

who is more likely to get there data infected:

(a) No Firewall, no updates, no real-time AV
(b) Firewall, always updated, relatime AV


further by having incremental back ups, you can in the worst case scenario use the last NON-infected version but at the loss of up to date data (if you didn't want to use any AV scans on your data)

in short, yes you can live without AV, but at the cost of possibly losing the most up to date data.


What I was alluding to was that with backups + Ghosting + AV = drastically less Pain and hassle, Drastically

Finally even if we get rid of virus writers you still have non intentional virus's e.g system/software bugs which can lead to system vulnerabilities.
 
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