The antivirus software conspiracy

reply to post by Sublime620


Thanks for that list. Thats what I call "Deny Ignorance".

reply to post by Skyfloating


Ah, gracias. I learned those the hard way. I ruined Windows so many times. I'm a reformating pro.

People spend hundreds of dollars on anti-virus protection every year for no reason. All books dedicated to proper windows security scrutinize the companies which offer only 1 year leases of their products and direct people to free alternatives.

It is not just the anti-virus industry profiting from ignorance, Sony was caught out knowingly infecting people's PCs without their knowledge when they played a Sony CD on their PC. This Rootkit limited what people could do while playing CDs. E.g. limiting their ability to rip or burn music. The rootkit also made people's CD drives impossible to use if they tried to uninstall the rootkit. This was all the way back in 2005.

en.wikipedia.org...

This does not however in any way suggest that you will be better off without protection. Never have your computer unprotected especially if you like to look up porn, torrents, lyrics or game cheats.

Avast! - A free, aggressive anti-virus software for personal use.

AdAware - the most popular free spyware detector.

Spybot Search and Destroy - another free spyware detector/eradicator.

There are plenty of free programs available on the internet, but not all have good intentions. Be careful when downloading ANY free software. Only goto reputable download sites such as pcworld.com/downloads or download.com and always read the descriptions and reviews to make sure the software does not contain spyware.

i actually know a computer savvy guy who used to get paid in cash by a large anti virus company to develop viruses. food for thought

Originally posted by alguymcgee
i actually know a computer savvy guy who used to get paid in cash by a large anti virus company to develop viruses. food for thought

Look...this site is all about getting to the bottom of something and making a difference.

It would be highly appreciated if you could tell us more...or if he could tell us more.

The insane thing is how some anti-virus companies apparently employ virus-writers in order to "test-drive" their stuff preempitvely.

"Just to make sure we are prepared for it, lets make the most destructive virus imaginable".

Hey Sublime,

you deserve 10000 thanks from me, malwarbytes did the trick Virus heat is gone. That was much easier than formatting my hd. I can't get over what a coincidence it is that this thread was started today.

Deny Virus's
Trustnobody

reply to post by trustnobody


Hey no problem.

It's my favorite thing to do - probably. I love working on computers and making them run right (software more than hardware).

I for one think it is hellishly fishy that no info turns up on google about this subject. It looks to me like someone has been doing some cleaning...
Conspicious by it's absence?

[edit on 9-5-2008 by cruzion]

Being an IT techie... I hate viruses and get satisfaction from removing the buggers... harder it is the more of a challenge and more satisfaction i get.. I go trawling through registry.. dlls.. running threads and all the subcomponents amongst the lot.

As of late many infections occuring due to flash drives being passed around computers, by default they are auto-run so the virus on the drive installs itself automatically.

So.. be careful what holes you plug your dongle into and use protection

I used to be a norton antivirus CE (corp edition) user, had gold lisence so unlimited updates etc etc but it lost it's efficiency at picking things up, I often turned vscanner off anyway as i'm reasonably well protected via firewall and able to pick up most dodgy things before I run/bother with them anyway.

I was on the piss one night and plugged in a flash drive of my mates girlfriends - boom some exe error messages and the works. DOH! Silly man I am.. forgot about flash drive virii and had virus scanner turned off.

It nuked sygate firewall, NAV CE amongst other things... disabled critical parts of them.. very nice virus. Ended up using norton removal tool which still COULDN'T get rid of the AV software which was now useless as it wouldn't update.

Manually removed the virus after plenty of mooching around and installed NOD32 (with added 'ahem') and it picked up many things that had been lying around for ages... cracked game loaders and the rest. A few false positives i'm sure but damn it was quick, small system footprint and nuked out some nasties that were hiding away in some interesting places that norton NEVER saw.

NOD32 independently tested comes out on top from what i've seen... give it a try, use a firewall and use spybot to patch up your browsers, use common sense when downloading things/email etc...

Any questions just flick me a message

-GR

I think the problem is with windows itself. It was created weak in the beginning and is still weak today because of how it is structured and operates. Also because Windows based computers are the most commonly used operating system, there is a wide market for the antivirus companies to go for unlike linux. Ive never had a virus or trojan because i use Ubuntu linux mostly, but i know windows is like a magnet to them.

From my experience i would recomment:

1. For a windows system turn off the windows firewall.

2. Run Comodo firewall pro. ( more intrinsic then any other firewall ive used, and ive used them all. Lots of people like checkpoints zonealarm firewall which is ok but not as good in my opinion).

3. I recommend Kapersky, or NOD32 for antivirus.

With linux you only need a hardware firewall, probably not even that.

reply to post by resistivity



Using Peepers vision, Windows Vista has 50,000,000 lines of code. Windows 2000 had roughly 5,000,000 give or take a million. So I guess a lot of mistakes can be typed in. Thats why all the world is a beta test scenario for the MS programmers to formulate there code into a usable operating system that hackers love rip up.

Originally posted by shiman
The government doesnt need an antivirus software to get into your computer. Its already installed. I found a file in windows (i checked 98, 98se, xp home, and xp pro.) And there is some pretty suspitious code.

Let me find the filename, .....

Allright. For you people with windows. (any) go into either your system or system 32 folder in the windows folder and look for this file. Advapi32.dll

View this file in notepad or some other text editor. Look for the hunk of data that is readable english. It should be many lines.

here is the url to the snapshot i took with win98.

i60.photobucket.com...

reply to post by shiman


It is a security file. If you are worried, maybe you should look into it. Ask an expert what that means.

I find it hard to believe that Windows would get away with anything. There are far too many programmers who would be willing to whistleblow and take down the giant software company.

I thought about that when I got my first virus in my computer. What's the point of writing a virus that will destroy your data? No point at all. Do they really think that we believe that some programmer with good skills will spend his time by doing this pointless work? No.

I use the free version of AVG, and the freee version of AdAware, and together I keep my PC relatively clean.Also, I purchased a program that arranges the directory to make it more efficient.

I have no need for Norton that just wastes cache and RAM. However, Norton will not allow me to remove it. It says I am not authorized. NOT AUTHORIZED? IT'S *MY* COMPUTER!!!!

Originally posted by spaznational
I have no need for Norton that just wastes cache and RAM. However, Norton will not allow me to remove it. It says I am not authorized. NOT AUTHORIZED? IT'S *MY* COMPUTER!!!!

This in-your-face-control-freak-behaviour of norton is what caused me to never ever by a product of theirs again.

Originally posted by Mikee
I thought about that when I got my first virus in my computer. What's the point of writing a virus that will destroy your data? No point at all. Do they really think that we believe that some programmer with good skills will spend his time by doing this pointless work? No.

Exactly. What the hell would my benefit be of writing stuff that disturbs some strangers computers?

As far as I can see AV-companies benefit significantly more. And yet we´re supposed to believe that 1 Million new viruses magically appear out of nowhere every year.

Originally posted by Skyfloating
Exactly. What the hell would my benefit be of writing stuff that disturbs some strangers computers?

As far as I can see AV-companies benefit significantly more. And yet we´re supposed to believe that 1 Million new viruses magically appear out of nowhere every year.

This is a very good point and one conspiracy I am inclined to believe without the need for a "smoking gun" in my face. The vast majority of viruses are simply a nuisance and just cause your computer to act buggy or slow down. These kinds of viruses that are rather pointless I would consider likely to be created by the AV companies. Very infrequently a virus comes along that is very distinct and has a "calling card" of sorts. These are creative and I could see an out-of-work programmer doing this for laughs.

As for the kind of person who would have the skill and drive to waste time on making a virus, just look at sites like Encyclopedia Dramatic and 4chan. The juvenile prankster/vandal mentality exists on the internet for sure. It's same kind of mentality that causes one to spray graffiti. Graffiti is also functionally useless (except for gangs perhaps) but it nonetheless widespread.

PS -- Yeah, I hate Norton. It came on my computer; I didn't choose it.

PPS -- I go to ED for lulz every day. I get OVER 9000 lulz.

[edit on 10-5-2008 by spaznational]

advapi32.dll is a part of an advanced API services library, supporting numerous APIs including many security and registry calls.

en.wikipedia.org...