What's Happened to all the Viruses/Virii??

GunJack

I've just finished sorting the most infected lappy I've seen for a good 8-12 months.... where have all the virii gone?? Are people in general just getting better at safer surfing?? Interested in other's experiences

debitcardmayhem

Watcha Gunny, I had one 3 weeks ago, 2349 PUPS but luckily not too much hassle. Only had to factory refresh one in six months. Mind you I have a neighbour who keeps using his tablet in free wifi zones all over the shop, and everyone in his contact list gets some crap every few days

Gillor

Or could could it be that anti-virus software generally is becoming more effective with even some of the free ones seeming to offer some sort of HIPS, heuristics, behaviour blocking or built-in sandboxing?

JJ_Egan

Target now more mobiles .

spud17

Didn't the US and Russia co-operate last year, and manage to 'take out' some of the more persistent offenders?


Last weekend I was given an old laptop to dispose of.
As usual, I ran a variety of programs just to see if any infections were present, and for me to learn a bit more.


Nothing at all showed up, despite it being used by a teenage lad, and all it had installed was AVG Free.

Jivesinger

For all its foibles, Windows 8 was the first Windows version to have a baseline anti-virus product installed by default, so users who don't know anything about security do at least have something there, which keeps itself up to date under default settings.

I know there are better products but Windows Defender is a lot better than having nothing at all, so I think this should help a bit.

agrinnall

I think maybe the villains have moved their focus to malware rather than viruses, when I cleaned up my pal's PC earlier this year (he's a techno-illiterate and the machine is used mainly by his 13 year old son) I found very few viruses but a heap of malware.

Nilrem

Jivesinger makes a good point about Windows 8 having baseline AV by default.

But the turning on by default of Windows firewall in XP (after the blaster fiasco), automated patching of Windows, and a massive recoding of large parts of the Windows backend stopped many of the most common methods of virus transmission (from memory when it jumped to Windows Vista a huge amount of legacy code was dropped, thus closing off a lot of vulnerabilities and killing off many strains of virus and worm).

As did the simple fact that people moved onto broadband, which usually involved a router which hid the devices behind it from port scans etc thanks to the fact that most routers have a basic hardware firewall, and by their very nature tended to stop unexpected incoming lines of communication (the NAT system works nicely there for ports that aren't actively in use from memory).

Most of the old viruses were transmitted because AV wasn't updated enough (often people installed it and didn't realise they ever needed to update/replace it), PC's used to be wide open to infection the moment they connected to the internet via dial up, because they needed time to patch (to close vulnerabilities), and didn't have a firewall (thus stuff that spread via the network could get in fast*).

I remember the blaster worm (I think it was) when I went to a big lan party, having heard about it before I went (it had been in the news for days/weeks), I'd already patched my PC, but I also already had a good AV and firewall installed as standard (so should have been ok without the patch as it was spread over a vulnerable open windows port), and being reasonably smug as loads of other people were infected because they hadn't taken basic precautions (I think I actually took a disc with the fix with me, as I usually took a full set in windows install media and common drivers on CDR's**).
From memory the organisers of the event ended up going around with CDR's containing the removal tool and the patch to stop reinfection, as it killed their network (which from memory had some sort of ISP class backbone router, which as every desk had 10/100 connections couldn't cope).
It was also about the only time I've ever seen ISP's implement measures to stop it spreading, as the likes of NTL took steps to detect infected machines on their service and block them from everything but a single page with instructions (and direct download links) on how to patch and fix the infection, along with a specific number to call if you needed help (I think they waived the normal charge for "PC problem" calls).

*I think at one point they reckoned a Windows PC in default configuration connected to the internet would be infected with something within about 30 minutes.

**As invariably someone either in the group I was in, or who knew us would have a computer meltdown of some form or another (and this was before the days of BB being common, I think the staff had a single 512k ADSL line to pull down patches and drivers if needed).

GunJack

Some good points, which I had considered. Whether it's virus, malware, PUPs, whatever, they're all undesirable f not all malicious, yet peeps still download crap and wonder why their pc runs badly

esuhl

More and more personii now have 64-bit operating systemii. Windowii has much better protection for 64-bit driverii, which should improve the resistance to virii.

:-)

GunJack

esuhl wrote: »

More and more personii now have 64-bit operating systemii. Windowii has much better protection for 64-bit driverii, which should improve the resistance to virii.

:-)

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

nice one mate