Tagged Questions
6
votes
4answers
333 views
How can Antivirus differentiate between a Trojan and a normal remote desktop application software?
RAT (Remote Access Tool, e.g. Sub7) are considered malicious by Antivirus software. How can it distinguish between such patches and a client application for commercial software like NetSupport ...
2
votes
2answers
113 views
Is interpreted malware easier to detect than compiled malware?
Is compiled code more of a security risk than interpreted code? I'm under the impression that it is due to the fact that compiled code can hide malicious code from malware scans.
-2
votes
1answer
81 views
Why isn't AV software configured to recognize installed program vulnerabilities?
Background (not necessary to read):
I've used a few different major AV programs day-to-day over the years, and not one has ever informed me I was running code with known vulnerabilities.
Not only ...
0
votes
2answers
127 views
How isolated are 2 operating systems on 1 harddisk?
Lets say I have 2 windows dual booting on the same harddrive (windws 7), How isolated are they?
I am thinking that there should be up to date antiviruses software on both Windows, and they should be ...
17
votes
6answers
455 views
How to deal with a person who gets easily fooled by internet and mail scams?
alternative title: How to deal with a person who has gotten paranoid and doesn't want to go online anymore?
A person, who has over the years been scammed many times, by bad spam/fraud emails, and ...
48
votes
10answers
4k views
How do you explain the necessity of “nuke it from orbit” to management and users?
When a machine has been infected with malware, most of us here immediately identify the appropriate action as "nuke it from orbit" - i.e. wipe the system and start over. Unfortunately, this is often ...
2
votes
1answer
83 views
Is there a website or free downloadable program to identify and remove malware from an ISO file?
Is there a website or free downloadable program that allows a user to identify and remove multiple types of malware from an ISO file?
-4
votes
1answer
210 views
What are the technial and programming requirements for writing a stealth keylogger? [closed]
I'm planning to write/code one such stealth keylogger that would bypass detection by a certain antivirus. (I don't want to name the vendor as I know how good Google queries are against StackExchange ...
14
votes
5answers
823 views
Why would a virus writer bother to check to see if a machine is infected before infecting it?
I was looking at the tripartite structure of a virus, and it seems to check to see if a computer is infected before infecting it with the virus. Would this be an attempt to use files that are already ...
18
votes
4answers
1k views
Are anti-virus companies companies regularly committing software piracy?
As Mikko Hypponen highlighted in a recent tweet, anti-Virus companies collect and store both samples of malicious software and samples of legitimate software:
This got me to thinking, what ...
6
votes
2answers
187 views
How do AV vendors choose malware names?
If you take a look at McAfee's recent malware page, you'll see that the names in the "Malware name" column aren't very human-readable: Downloader.a!cnz, W32/Autorun.worm.bgh, ...
-1
votes
2answers
1k views
Malware or buggy software gives Low Disk Space warning
Since a few days, I am getting an alert that in my c drive disk space is low. When I verified, free space in my c drive was decreasing hour by hour and there was a stage when it simply said that 0 mb ...
19
votes
2answers
472 views
Cohen's problem
Fred Cohen determined theoritically that viral detetction is an undecidable problem. Can anyone provide an intuitive reasoning for that?
Background
Fred Cohen experimented with computer viruses ...
3
votes
5answers
712 views
How can I know if my PC is getting infected?
I have installed an antivirus, but as no antivirus is perfect, what can I do to diagnose if my PC is getting infected?
For example, keeping a close eye on what programs and tasks run when I turn my ...
3
votes
2answers
466 views
Why do I get AV alerts when browsing a web page?
I'm using the latest version of Firefox and Windows is up to date. When I was browsing a webpage and clicked a link the browser displayed "connection has been reset" and AVAST poped-up saying "Alert!" ...
12
votes
4answers
606 views
How is a worm different from a virus?
In spite of various online articles, I'm a bit unclear on the distinction between a "worm" and a "virus".
Two related questions--
Is there a useful and clear distinction here or no? If so, what is ...
9
votes
2answers
17k views
How serious is InstallIQ?
Background:
Recently I've seen hits for InstallIQ a "potentially unwanted application" from ESET. From what I can find it seems like this is an installer wrapper that asks people to install other ...
7
votes
2answers
255 views
Are there any independent organizations doing (publicly available) IT security research?
When looking up security risks on the net I find that all research being cited (if any is cited) always seems to come from the Anti-Malware companies. (just e.g., this article cites F-secure, AVG and ...
