o/t. anti virus software

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the
wonderful person Jim Roberts <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

Hi everyone. I have been hit by a major virus problem on my laptop. Dont
worry am using the desk top machine for this.Am using Panda at the moment
and would like opinions on Norton anti virus software or any other software.

Norton is massively bloated. And impossible to uninstall. I use Trend
(PcCillin) .. try their 'housecall' on-line checker for your buggy
laptop. AVG (free) also gets good reviews.

However 95% of malware prevention is down to the user - don't open,
install, or run things which you are not 100% sure about (where they
came from, what they do, etc.). If you got something from bittorrent,
warez sites/newsgroups, or some other P2P network, and you run it,
expect to get infected.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Contact recommends the use of Firefox; SC recommends it at gunpoint.

On Thu, 3 Nov 2005 22:28:21 -0000, "Jim Roberts" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Hi everyone. I have been hit by a major virus problem on my laptop. Dont
worry am using the desk top machine for this.Am using Panda at the moment
and would like opinions on Norton anti virus software or any other software.

I have used Avast! Home Edition for a couple of years and am delighted
with it. It updates automatically and tells you so, and spots infected
e-mail after only 20 lines are downloaded (I use Mailwasher). What's
more it's free. Available from http://www.avast.com/

HTH

John D.
--
at home in Kendal, Cumbria
Lake District Walks website: http://www.lakedistrictwalks.com/
40+ walks, 400+ photographs, GPS data
Kilimanjaro trip: http://www.lakedistrictwalks.com/kilimanjaro/

On Thu, 3 Nov 2005 22:28:21 -0000, "Jim Roberts" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Hi everyone. I have been hit by a major virus problem on my laptop. Dont
worry am using the desk top machine for this.Am using Panda at the moment
and would like opinions on Norton anti virus software or any other software.

Norton is not highly thought of. I use NOD32, which works well and
takes up few resources. Browse the archives at alt.comp.anti-virus
for further info.

Don't forget that you really need an effective firewall as well as a
reliable AV - Zone Alarm is very good, and there's a free version
available - and you need to keep up with Windows updates too.

In addition to that, there's a real possiblity that you have lots of
spyware if you've got a big virus problem. For that you need other
programmes, for instance AdAware, Spybot Search and Destroy and
Spyware Blaster. Many (if not all) are available free on the net.

Good luck 🙂

Wet fishes,
--
,,
(**)PeeWiglet~~
/ \ / \ pee AT [guessthisbit].co.uk

"If you teach a child to read, he or her can pass a literacy test."
g.w.AT [guessthisbit].com

Another vote for Avast! here. Switched from Norton and the difference
is amazing. No drain on resources - you really can install, leave it to
do it's job and forget about it. The support forum is the best I've
ever come across too.

"GSV Three Minds in a Can" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Norton is massively bloated. And impossible to uninstall. I use Trend
(PcCillin)

Another vote for PcCillin here. Also includes a firewall (although I don't
use it - I use the firewall on my router). And for spyware Adaware (though I
don't feel the need to run it very often). Although I have known Spybot
detect spyware which Adaware missed and vice versa.

Quoted message said:

However 95% of malware prevention is down to the user - don't open,
install, or run things which you are not 100% sure about (where they came
from, what they do, etc.). If you got something from bittorrent, warez
sites/newsgroups, or some other P2P network, and you run it, expect to get
infected.

Indeed, probably the main reason I don't have many problems. Oh that and the
fact that I'm inreasingly transferring to my Mac laptop.

Roy.

Jim Roberts said:

Hi everyone. I have been hit by a major virus problem on my laptop. Dont
worry am using the desk top machine for this.Am using Panda at the moment
and would like opinions on Norton anti virus software or any other software.

Tks#

I've been using AVG, the free version,
on my home PC for years and despite two
teenage kids doing all the things
teenage kids do with PCs I've never had
a virus problem. There have been plenty
of warnings but AVG has always stopped
the problem.

Avast is also an excellent product.

I have access to PCs using Norton
Internet Security 2005, they come
bundled with a 12 month subscription.
This contains anti virus, a personal
firewall, anti spam, pop-up blocker and
other stuff.

More than half of the people come to the
end of their years free updates and opt
not to pay for continued use, instead
they opt for one of the better free
programs like Avast or AVG coupled with
either a hardware firewall in a router
or one of the free firewall programs
like Zone Alarm or Kerio.

The most important thing to remember is
not having the program installed, it's
keeping it up to date.

--
Regards

Nick - Software Engineer, we used to be
called computer programmers, and IT
Manager for the past 30 years.

Hardware firewall in a router plus AVG free. I've used Norton and
McAfee and can't see any way in which AVG loses out to them.

druidh

Jim Roberts bashed at the keyboard and came up with this gem of wisdom in
uk.rec.walking:

Quoted message said:

Hi everyone. I have been hit by a major virus problem on my laptop. Dont
worry am using the desk top machine for this.Am using Panda at the moment
and would like opinions on Norton anti virus software or any other
software.

Tks#

Dont use norton unless you want to experiance what it is like wading thru
treacle, and hours trying to get rid of it when it goes wrong.

"Michael Thompson" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Jim Roberts bashed at the keyboard and came up with this gem of wisdom in
uk.rec.walking:

Quoted message said:

Hi everyone. I have been hit by a major virus problem on my laptop. Dont
worry am using the desk top machine for this.Am using Panda at the moment
and would like opinions on Norton anti virus software or any other
software.

Tks#

Dont use norton unless you want to experiance what it is like wading thru
treacle, and hours trying to get rid of it when it goes wrong.

Why couldn't this topic have been raised 7 days ago, i.e. before I renewed
my subscription to Norton? :-(

"druidh" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hardware firewall in a router plus AVG free. I've used Norton and
McAfee and can't see any way in which AVG loses out to them.

druidh

Exactly the same here, hardware firewall and AVG. I also regular test my
defenses at http://www.grc.com/default.htm

Jhimmy

Woollyzone <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Why couldn't this topic have been raised 7 days ago, i.e. before I renewed
my subscription to Norton? :-(

I'll be renewing mine soon. It works.
--
Gordon Harris

Jhimmy bashed at the keyboard and came up with this gem of wisdom in
uk.rec.walking:

Quoted message said:

"druidh" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hardware firewall in a router plus AVG free. I've used Norton and
McAfee and can't see any way in which AVG loses out to them.

druidh

Exactly the same here, hardware firewall and AVG. I also regular test my
defenses at http://www.grc.com/default.htm

Jhimmy

There are many ways to assess the security of a given system, but all
assessment approaches must meet at a bottom line: they must be honest,
sufficiently conclusive, sufficiently wide and predictive to a certain
point. Conducting assessments without any of those bottom line requirements
may cause more harm than good.
ENTER: SHIELDS UP!

Shields up is a service offered free on Steve Gibson?s Web site at grc.com.

It is basically a web frontend to a backend logic which will probe your
system (based on your HTTP-connection's IP address) for open ports and
recommend a number of actions. Upon visiting the web site, you are
presented with a bit of information regarding the operations of ShieldsUp
and offered two probe methods: Test my shields and Probe my ports.
TEST MY SHIELDS

When clicking the ?Test my shields? button, ShieldsUp will inform you about
its attempt to ?contact the ??Hidden Internet Server?? within your PC.

Matter of fact, ShieldsUp will send a NQUERY NetBIOS UDP packet with
Broadcast, Query and Request flags set. Upon receiving an answer (or not),
ShieldsUp will determine if your Shields are ?up?. This is - obviously -
not a very accurate method.

And - also obviously - not really a ?hidden Internet Server?, either.
Gibson?s tendency to over exaggerate his abilities and tools must have,
once again, led him to make a bold claim like this.

Now, there?s a twist to this test. I setup a machine laden with
vulnerabilities. Beginning from a few installed backdoors (BackOrifice,
Sub7) and other vulnerabilities, I did not even spend the few minutes to
close down the most obvious security holes. ShieldsUp, however, happily
reported:

Unable to connect with NetBIOS to your computer. All attempts to get any
information from your computer have FAILED. (This is very uncommon for a
Windows networking-based PC.) Relative to vulnerabilities from Windows
networking, this computer appears to be VERY SECURE since it is NOT
exposing ANY of its internal NetBIOS networking protocol over the Internet.

Which is simply wrong.

There is nothing, I could have done to stop even unsophisticated intruders
from attacking and breaking into my machine, a small script like ShieldsUp,
however, is simply fooled by Windows? inconsistent behavior on UDP
responses.

In fact, no five minutes after I conducted this test, a random script kiddie
attack opened my shares (C: and D🙂 which I deliberately setup, read the
?Gotcha Sucker? textfile, I deposited in C: and left. The tools to do those
?wonders? are freely available on the net.
PROBE MY PORTS

Gibson, surprisingly lucid, warns of a false sense of security.

Before You Break Out the Champagne??, warns a textbox just below the results
and asks me to perform another check of my system, this time by probing my
ports. A click on the button, and I am there.

Again, the script presents me with a number of results. At this point, it
starts probing my system with a number of connect() calls, which
essentially seek to establish a connection to a few ports on my system.
This time, oh wonder, it recognizes the fact that NetBIOS is open, but
overlooks the installed Spyware and Backdoor programs.

It also gracefully overlooks a grave security problem I introduced by
installing a freely available third party application which essentially
allows anyone on the net to browse my machines hard drives and down- and
upload files.

I also had a web server installed. A small program which can be downloaded
from download.com or similar sites allows my computer to export pictures to
the net, my friends or casual visitors would then be able to browse this
photo album with a regular web browser. The source code for said program is
freely available, it?s a very short program which basically implements a
?crippled? web server and some extra features. After reading the source
code, I am sure there is not much an attacker could exploit.

GRCs ?nanoprobes? diligently connect() to the server and then wander on. The
port test, however, tells me my HTTP port is closed. Strange. Very strange.
A look at the logs I am sniffing from this connection shows my web server
responded - still the test program reports it to be closed. I repeated the
exercise with both Windows and Unix based web servers and got an overall
hit rate of less than thirty percent, in other words, more than often the
test program would not detect my open web server.
WHAT IS STEALTH?

Well, for starters, Stealth isn?t all that. There is no such thing as
?stealth? on the Internet. Ports are either open (they respond
accordingly), closed (they do not respond accordingly) or are non-existent
(nothing comes back at all). Gibson calls the latter ?Stealth?, which is as
wrong as could be.

A false sense of security even here. Just for Mr. Gibson?s records: my FTP
port is not stealth, it?s just not responding with an ICMP_DESTUNREACH when
probed.
OVERALL LOOK

I received a clean bill of health from ShieldsUp!. Despite having a computer
which is most likely the least secure computer ever tested by those
scripts. A day later, I tried the same with the help of a friend?s NeXT
cube and was swamped with ?you are sooo insecure? messages. Regardless the
fact that said friend?s NeXT cube is about the safest place to store data I
can imagine, it responds to every port probe and connect() attempt with a
TCP or UDP stream saying ?go away? in its packet payloads. Gibson tends to
exaggerate. His supposedly superior system does not divert in much parts
from what is already available out there in hundreds if not thousands of
other incarnations. The boldest claim, however, can be spotted on his Ports
page:

?If you have used ShieldsUP! in the past, you may have just noticed that
the Port Probe system is much faster than ever before. This is the result
of the emerging deployment of our much-anticipated NanoProbe Technology. It
is finally becoming real.?

There is nothing Nano about Gibson?s probes. In fact, a simple traffic
sniffer reveals the truth about those probes, they are merely ICMP and
TCP/UDP based connect and scan attempts. Gibson has reached a state of
notoriety for those claims, most recently for his GENESiS project in which
he claims to have invented the solution to DoS attacks by describing a
system which has been invented and Open Source since 1995 and is part of
hundreds of thousands of operating systems worldwide already. Suffice to
say, Gibson - again his friendly self - dismisses any criticism by claiming
he (the Security Guru) never heard about other inventions in this area. Had
Mr. Gibson done the needed research, he might have come up with something
really good - he has enough energy, one has to give him that - but
apparently he never strays outside his own fan circle and media relations
world. Gibson is not a member of any respected security effort or interest
group, he is shunned inside the security profession and only lives through
media appearances and his charismatic approach which secured him the love
and almost sect like dedication of his followers.
GIBSON - THE MAN

Much has been said and written about Steve Gibson, the man behind grc.com
and ShieldsUp. If you want to read more about him, see
http://www.grcsucks.com to find out about the other side of his claims,
presented by real security professionals.

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the wonderful person
Woollyzone <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

"Michael Thompson" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Jim Roberts bashed at the keyboard and came up with this gem of wisdom in
uk.rec.walking:

Quoted message said:

Hi everyone. I have been hit by a major virus problem on my laptop. Dont
worry am using the desk top machine for this.Am using Panda at the moment
and would like opinions on Norton anti virus software or any other
software.

Tks#

Dont use norton unless you want to experiance what it is like wading thru
treacle, and hours trying to get rid of it when it goes wrong.

Why couldn't this topic have been raised 7 days ago, i.e. before I renewed
my subscription to Norton? :-(

Consider it to be a tax on the unwary to support Peter in his old
age....

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Contact recommends the use of Firefox; SC recommends it at gunpoint.

GSV Three Minds in a Can <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the wonderful
person Gordon <[email hidden]> said

Quoted message said:

Woollyzone <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Why couldn't this topic have been raised 7 days ago, i.e. before I renewed
my subscription to Norton? :-(

I'll be renewing mine soon. It works.

Until you try to uninstall it. And it works no better than most other
packages, while it does chew up significantly more CPU than most of
them, and costs more than many.

I installed it as soon as I bought this PC with Windows XP.
What I didn't know was that it would screw up the whole system because
of the XP AV program.

After a call to the help line I uninstalled Norton, disabled the Windows
AV and re-installed Norton and all was ok.
--
Gordon Harris

GSV Three Minds in a Can () said:

AVG (free) also gets good reviews.

Yeah, AVG is great.

vG, using it

--
~~~~~~ Volker Gringmuth ~~~~~~~~~~~ http://einklich.net/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Wir brauchen keine Nachhilfe in Sachen Ausländerfeindlichkeit."
(Helmut Kohl, 1998)

On Fri, 4 Nov 2005 20:51:14 +0000, Gordon <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Woollyzone <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Why couldn't this topic have been raised 7 days ago, i.e. before I renewed
my subscription to Norton? :-(

I'll be renewing mine soon. It works.

....Assuming that you're able to renew your subscription. I've been
having no end of trouble with their online renewal system over the
last couple of days. I made about half a dozen attempts, using two
perfectly good credit cards. It kept telling me that my card numbers
were invalid, and refused to complete the renewal. (Other traders have
been quite happy to accept my credit cards. I used one of them twice
yesterday - once online and once in a real shop. It was accepted
without trouble on both occasions.)

I've now given up, uninstalled Norton, and, this morning, bought
PC-cillin Internet Security. Now that's giving me trouble. It
installed OK using the serial number supplied by e-mail. But whenever
I try to use the online updating, I get an error message telling me
that my serial number is invalid.

Oh, joy.

Peter.

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the
wonderful person Peter <[email hidden]> said
<snip>

Quoted message said:

I've now given up, uninstalled Norton, and, this morning, bought
PC-cillin Internet Security. Now that's giving me trouble. It
installed OK using the serial number supplied by e-mail. But whenever
I try to use the online updating, I get an error message telling me
that my serial number is invalid.

Did you REGISTER the serial number (online) with Trend? (Open MAIN, then
updates & registration, register). Until you do that you will have
problems updating. Yes, it'll install with any old serial number that
passes the hash check.

--
GSV Three Minds in a Can
Contact recommends the use of Firefox; SC recommends it at gunpoint.

Peter <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

On Fri, 4 Nov 2005 20:51:14 +0000, Gordon <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Woollyzone <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Why couldn't this topic have been raised 7 days ago, i.e. before I renewed
my subscription to Norton? :-(

I'll be renewing mine soon. It works.

...Assuming that you're able to renew your subscription. I've been
having no end of trouble with their online renewal system over the
last couple of days. I made about half a dozen attempts, using two
perfectly good credit cards. It kept telling me that my card numbers
were invalid, and refused to complete the renewal. (Other traders have
been quite happy to accept my credit cards. I used one of them twice
yesterday - once online and once in a real shop. It was accepted
without trouble on both occasions.)

I tend to buy an update from a shop every couple of years, in case I
have to re-install it on install on another PC, to save the horrendous
updates from an old CD.
Never had trouble with the online renewals though.

Quoted message said:

I've now given up, uninstalled Norton, and, this morning, bought
PC-cillin Internet Security. Now that's giving me trouble. It
installed OK using the serial number supplied by e-mail. But whenever
I try to use the online updating, I get an error message telling me
that my serial number is invalid.

Oh, joy.

:-)

I was strongly recommended to PC-cillin when I first got online, but was
given the wrong name and couldn't find it. 8-(
--
Gordon Harris

GSV Three Minds in a Can said:

Bitstring <[email hidden]>, from the
wonderful person Peter <[email hidden]> said
<snip>

Quoted message said:

I've now given up, uninstalled Norton, and, this morning, bought
PC-cillin Internet Security. Now that's giving me trouble. It
installed OK using the serial number supplied by e-mail. But whenever
I try to use the online updating, I get an error message telling me
that my serial number is invalid.

Did you REGISTER the serial number (online) with Trend? (Open MAIN, then
updates & registration, register). Until you do that you will have
problems updating. Yes, it'll install with any old serial number that
passes the hash check.

Thank you for the suggestion. Tried it. Got an error message to the
effect that the serial number was invalid... even though I'd copied
and pasted it from their e-mail.

Peter.