Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: ebfd11 on July 22, 2014, 07:17:47 AM
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I just saw this on another site and was generally surprised at the out come..
(http://i.imgur.com/S29yU3C.jpg)
http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/security-software/325583-real-world-antivirus-protection-test-winners-and-losers
So does anyone want to run MS Essentials as their only AV software??
LawnDart
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Nice find.
I'd like to point out some aspects, though:
- Antivirus programs change rapidly, a test only tells the situation of the shortish testing period. Instead of some months a year of testing would give a better picture of this kind of a product. Four months is better than one run, though.
- Although programs like MSE get a poor rating in a test, it may still protect you well enough. As the people of Microsoft say, their goal is to protect from the worst nasties instead of winning tests. Most of the security sits between the backrest and the keyboard anyway.
- Some high ranked AV programs may do more harm to computing than a bunch of less critical viruses!
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Why isn't Norton on the list?
I kid, I kid. :lol
Coogan
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MSE has always been rubbish.
Also note these are mostly consumer versions, so that's why you don't see Symantec in there (nor McAfee enterprise which I'd rate highly vs their consumer product).
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I have used MSE exclusively on all my machines (5) since it was released and have had 0 problems to date on any machine. People need to be smarter when browsing and not just rely on AV software to keep them safe. I will continue to run MSE on all of my machines despite that little chart. :cheers:
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People need to be smarter when browsing and not just rely on AV software to keep them safe.
Thinking smarter browsing is going to keep virus's and malware away is just stupid. Infections come from sites considered 'safe'.
Just because MSE says you don't have a virus ... doesn't actually mean it is true.
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Thinking smarter browsing is going to keep virus's and malware away is just stupid. Infections come from sites considered 'safe'.
Just because MSE says you don't have a virus ... doesn't actually mean it is true.
just because any av says you don't have a virus doesn't actually mean is true.
Oh man too many double negatives.
semp
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I use windows only to play games, all the rest is done either on linux or OSX. Much safer that way.
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Thinking smarter browsing is going to keep virus's and malware away is just stupid. Infections come from sites considered 'safe'.
Just because MSE says you don't have a virus ... doesn't actually mean it is true.
relax there buddy, I never said smarter browsing will keep viruses and malware away. I am merely saying it helps. You are never completely safe regardless of what AV you use. I'm willing to continue doing what I do on my machines without worry though. It's worked for me all these years so far. :aok
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I am happy with ESET Smart Security 7.
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relax there buddy, I never said smarter browsing will keep viruses and malware away. I am merely saying it helps. You are never completely safe regardless of what AV you use. I'm willing to continue doing what I do on my machines without worry though. It's worked for me all these years so far. :aok
If you use Windows, in its default configuration, your computer is wide open for virtually anything, regardless of your browsing habits.
Yes, smart browsing is also needed, but as long as the delivery mechanisms are left open in Windows, there is nothing smart browsing will do to help prevent your computer from being infected.
If it works for you, great, but it is more luck and anything else if you allow Windows to be run in its default configuration.
I am only saying this to make sure anyone reading this does not assume using safe browsing habits, as the only line of defense, will protect your computer from bad things. It will not.
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If you use Windows, in its default configuration, your computer is wide open for virtually anything, regardless of your browsing habits.
Yes, smart browsing is also needed, but as long as the delivery mechanisms are left open in Windows, there is nothing smart browsing will do to help prevent your computer from being infected.
If it works for you, great, but it is more luck and anything else if you allow Windows to be run in its default configuration.
I am only saying this to make sure anyone reading this does not assume using safe browsing habits, as the only line of defense, will protect your computer from bad things. It will not.
My browsing habbit is 100% safe against all windows viruses. I don't browse with Windows.
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...
Although programs like MSE get a poor rating in a test, it may still protect you well enough. As the people of Microsoft say, their goal is to protect from the worst nasties instead of winning tests. Most of the security sits between the backrest and the keyboard anyway
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"PEBKAC"
Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair ;)
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Re PEBKAC: have there not been cases where the servers of well known "safe" web pages, or "safe" adv delivery pages, have been compromised by malware to deliver other malware to unsuspecting viewers of those "safe" web pages? How does the organism between the keyboard and the chair avoid that? Not browse any web pages? Browse with JavaScript off (which breaks virtually all web pages)? Browse from Linux which gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling of invincibility because you think Linux has no viruses?
I can't remember where I read it, but I believe a group did a study of web pages and they found that the naughty bits of the Internet were actually delivering slightly less malware than the "safe" bits. Here's another study re computer safety: a University group in England bought a bunch of unclaimed USB drives from the London Tube Lost and Found department. They then checked them all. Something like 60% were infected with malware, some of them by dozens of different malwares.
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For a year or two, I used AV programs and things peddled by McAfee and Norton.
Sometime long ago, I stopped.
No AV at all. I do use Ad Aware and Malwarebytes.
Once since 1997, has a computer become infected.
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Antiviruses are at worst vulnerabilities themselves which get targeted: http://www.syscan360.org/slides/2014_EN_BreakingAVSoftware_JoxeanKoret.pdf
Antivirus propaganda:
“We make your computer safer with no performance
penalty!”
“We protect against unknown zero day attacks!”.
Reality:
AV engines makes your computer more vulnerable
with a varying degree of performance penalty.
The AV engine is as vulnerable to zero day attacks
as the applications it tries to protect from.
And can even lower the operating system
exploiting mitigations, by the way...
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Antiviruses are at worst vulnerabilities themselves which get targeted: http://www.syscan360.org/slides/2014_EN_BreakingAVSoftware_JoxeanKoret.pdf
I had a quick read of that, a lot of it is technically incorrect. They avoided the commercial heavyweights, focussed on some products barely anyones heard of (some AV engine out of Vietnam?). Also some of the exploits are heavily contrived (running Windows AV on Linux to attack memory?) so really world translation is doubtful.
You're still better to have AV.
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I had a quick read of that, a lot of it is technically incorrect. They avoided the commercial heavyweights, focussed on some products barely anyones heard of (some AV engine out of Vietnam?). Also some of the exploits are heavily contrived (running Windows AV on Linux to attack memory?) so really world translation is doubtful.
You're still better to have AV.
Whatever you say lol. His article is more convincing than you though. So you mean Bitdefender, Panda, Avast, Nod32 etc. are not widely used products? From Norton we already know that this threat he describes became a reality.
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so mrripley what you are saying is that we are better off not having an av that having one?
semp
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so mrripley what you are saying is that we are better off not having an av that having one?
semp
Yes, ditch Windows for anything but games and you either won't need AV or the one you use will not get attacked against so much.
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Yes, ditch Windows for anything but games and you either won't need AV or the one you use will not get attacked against so much.
yeah tried that. had way too many problems with linux crashing. it would work great at the beginning then after a few weeks something or other would stop working and spent way too many hours trying to figure out what the problem was. I know a couple of things here and there but I could never figure out how to make it work right. mostly it has to do with the hardware I use.
semp
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Browsers apart, it's not that easy to protect a complete linux installation as it looks.
Even with graphic firewall some typical server applications like ftp, samba etc needs tweaking.
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Whatever you say lol. His article is more convincing than you though.
I work in network security. I see a lot of stuff, talk to a lot of people, vendors, developers. There are always people trying to get attention with presentations like his.
FWIW I have never had a virus on Windows since at least Win95,
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yeah tried that. had way too many problems with linux crashing. it would work great at the beginning then after a few weeks something or other would stop working and spent way too many hours trying to figure out what the problem was. I know a couple of things here and there but I could never figure out how to make it work right. mostly it has to do with the hardware I use.
semp
If you used linux Mint, that was your problem. It's never been stable. You should try Kubuntu or Subdivision instead.
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If you used linux Mint, that was your problem. It's never been stable. You should try Kubuntu or Subdivision instead.
problem is you never know which one is your problem.
semp
btw once you recommended Linux mint.
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problem is you never know which one is your problem.
semp
btw once you recommended Linux mint.
If I did I probably thought at that time that they got over their stability problems. I was wrong.
It's a fact however that most of the linux distros are extremely stable and require nothing more than basic setup to serve as a web-browsing, music listening, image/video viewing etc. computer for most daily uses. The biggest problem with open source is that the developers are fanatic about licensing so you may need to install codecs etc. additions to get everything running. There are a lot of good instructions however how to do that.
For ubuntu for example, there are websites that teach you to make a basic setup '10 things to do after installing ubuntu'.
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I tried ubuntu and did all the recommendations they did. but just like the other 4 or 5 I tried, it slowly started to crash. for example on the hd that I have I am unable to update it. the "control panel" or whatever you call it wont even come up, it just hangs in there. I'll give it another try in a few months once some of them get a bit more updated.
linux is not a system like windows where it is "install and forget". it's a bit more complicated and for people who like to tinker with stuff. I like to mess around with stuff but in this one I got "way over my head" trying to fix whichever problem came at me.
semp
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I tried ubuntu and did all the recommendations they did. but just like the other 4 or 5 I tried, it slowly started to crash. for example on the hd that I have I am unable to update it. the "control panel" or whatever you call it wont even come up, it just hangs in there. I'll give it another try in a few months once some of them get a bit more updated.
linux is not a system like windows where it is "install and forget". it's a bit more complicated and for people who like to tinker with stuff. I like to mess around with stuff but in this one I got "way over my head" trying to fix whichever problem came at me.
semp
No actually linux is exactly 'install and forget'. You must have done something wrong in the setup. For example my parents use a Kubuntu setup I installed to them 4 years ago. They haven't called me even once to fix it as opposed to windows needing fixing every few months.
Next time when you install linux make sure that your install DVD is burned at maximum 4x speed and that you follow instructions meant only for that specific distribution and version. If you try to follow instructions which are meant for other versions most likely you'll end up messing something up. Also the install media can be very tricky, if the cd/dvd has burn errors the setup may finish seemingly ok but stuff is broken in reality.
The last linux setup DVD I tried to burn with the built in burn tool in W7 using standard settings was faulty, IIRC you can't define burn speed in the built in tool.
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The last linux setup DVD I tried to burn with the built in burn tool in W7 using standard settings was faulty, IIRC you can't define burn speed in the built in tool.
Did you check "Verify disc after burning"?
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Did you check "Verify disc after burning"?
Not in that case, wouldn't make any difference though if/when the default speed produced errors.
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Not in that case, wouldn't make any difference though if/when the default speed produced errors.
Agreed, but you would have noticed the error sooner, before a seemingly successful install which turns out to have failed without notification.
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I used a usb stick.
semp
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I used a usb stick.
semp
Then it's something you did during the setup. It's very easy to mess up linux if you follow the wrong instructions (just as it's easy to mess up Windows if you follow instructions of a newer/older version).
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from a usb it installs by itself. no questions asked.
semp
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The last linux setup DVD I tried to burn with the built in burn tool in W7 using standard settings was faulty, IIRC you can't define burn speed in the built in tool.
So you're saying that for some reason Windows won't optimize the speed of an optical drive but instead runs it at some lower speed? I really find this difficult to believe. I get that a drive might have borked an OS installation without throwing up an error. I've had that happen. How can you be sure it was because Microsoft decided to run your burn speed at something other than max and why, as the Linux devotee you are, were you using Windows to begin with?
(just as it's easy to mess up Windows if you follow instructions of a newer/older version).
Really? Every version of Window's I've installed gives on screen prompts from time to time. It's really pretty hard to follow any other kind of instructions. Care to elaborate on where one might mess up the Windows installation by following the "wrong instructions"?
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So you're saying that for some reason Windows won't optimize the speed of an optical drive but instead runs it at some lower speed? I really find this difficult to believe. I get that a drive might have borked an OS installation without throwing up an error. I've had that happen. How can you be sure it was because Microsoft decided to run your burn speed at something other than max and why, as the Linux devotee you are, were you using Windows to begin with?
Really? Every version of Window's I've installed gives on screen prompts from time to time. It's really pretty hard to follow any other kind of instructions. Care to elaborate on where one might mess up the Windows installation by following the "wrong instructions"?
Why feed into it BE? I have NEVER heard of ANYONE having an ODD burn something at other than the speed that was selected (hardware issues are the fault of the OS). I've never had a virus on any of my PC's. I've never had a botched OS install that was the fault of Windows (back in 2008 I had a bad sector on my HDD that prevented XP Pro SP2 from installing).
I keep hearing that my PSU is inferior and never should have been used in my build, even though it is rock solid. This section sadly has turned into "opinions should be taken as gospel".
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So you're saying that for some reason Windows won't optimize the speed of an optical drive but instead runs it at some lower speed? I really find this difficult to believe. I get that a drive might have borked an OS installation without throwing up an error. I've had that happen. How can you be sure it was because Microsoft decided to run your burn speed at something other than max and why, as the Linux devotee you are, were you using Windows to begin with?
Really? Every version of Window's I've installed gives on screen prompts from time to time. It's really pretty hard to follow any other kind of instructions. Care to elaborate on where one might mess up the Windows installation by following the "wrong instructions"?
Reading comprehension please. I said the media should be burned at _slower_ speed not at max speed to avoid errors, naturally. The built in burner burns automatically at max. Also the setup errors I was talking about were obviously not the OS setup itself but various tweaking guides found on the internet which help you to get proprietary codecs, Microsoft fonts etc. working on your linux installation. Those can mess your linux up good if you follow the instructions of a wrong distro or even the wrong version of your current distro. Just as you can mess up windows by trying to tweak Win8 using instructions of WinXP.
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from a usb it installs by itself. no questions asked.
semp
Semp, I have installed personally about 20 different linux distributions on literally hundreds of different occasions and setups and my experience is totally opposite to yours. You either have some problematic hardware or something you did during the process messed the install up.
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This section sadly has turned into "opinions should be taken as gospel".
The internet is fully of google-experts. You soon learn to get over them :)
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See Rule #4
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This thread is no longer viable.