I’m really not sure which forum this question should go in. I figured either IMHO or GQ, so I mentally rolled a 100-sided die and chose IMHO.
Anyway, I’ve been asked by friends to clean up their malware infested machines and I read threads here about a poster’s computer taken over by various pieces of bad software. I’ve seen questions here about how many AV programs you should run, including multiple levels of protection, etc. As far as I can tell, though, my own machine is not only clean but has never been infested (at least, not in the last 5 or 6 years).
For a while I thought that maybe my machine was silently infested or something, but when I’ve worked on other’s machines, it’s clear they had problems (Windows Update turned off, AV software failing to start up or failing to update, pop ups, browser redirections). Also, I’ve run MalwareBytes and RUBotted on my own machines, with clean results.
So, I don’t really know how someone’s machine gets infected. I surf around pretty freely, including, you know, sketchier sites.
Anyway, I’d like to try and test out my AV software. I’m using Windows 7 Home Premium on all my machines. I have Avast Free software and I’m usually behind a Netgear wi-fi router with a built-in firewall. Windows firewall is up, too.
Download the EICAR test file. It’s a harmless bit of code that is marked a virus by all antivirus makers in order to do exactly what you want to do. It will show if your antivirus is working.
I’ll check it out, but I don’t normally download things willy-nilly from the web. Is it fair to say, then, that I can’t really get a virus unless I do something silly, like open a strange attachment, download some warez pretending to be a cracked version of some hot game, and so on?
For what it’s worth, my family does most of its surfing on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari (for the PC).
Sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear – I don’t mind downloading that particular file, but I’m trying to figure out how other people pick up malware, and see if I pick one up by doing whatever it is they do.
By the time I get my hands on their computer, it’s already infected. When I ask what happened, it’s always, “I don’t know, I guess the kids did something” or “I started getting these pop ups.”
I mean, are they getting them as a drive-by download, opening some file, or what? I’d like to do whatever it is they do and see if it affects my computer system.
In any case, I’ll try out that file as well. Thanks!
Ah, gotcha. And, I guess the DVDRIP files are exe’s or zips, not mpeg or avi files.
I’ve seen a few of those realistic looking popups, but once I happened to be on a LINUX machine at the time, so it was pretty funny how out of place it looked.
So, it does seem that the web is a pretty safe place as long as you are careful about what you download. I’ll try that file above anyway, since I’d like to see what it looks like when Avast discovers something.
Just an update to close off this thread – I tried downloading that file and Avast! stopped it. Then, I copied the text above into Notepad and tried to save it as a .com file and Avast! stopped it and put it into the virus chest.
So, it seems I’m protected against known viruses pretty well. I guess the people who give me their computers to clean up either got fooled by some pop up or are visiting sites even weirder than the ones I visit and, when asked to download some media player or something, click OK.
Thanks, all, for the help. I’m tempted to start a thread that asks, “Have you been infected by malware? If so, what did you do to cause the infection”, but I probably won’t bother.