The Antivirus Era Is Over

[lcbxx]

I have a PC with a hard to crack problem, when it goes to sleep mode after a while and you want it to awake again then it could take anywhere from instant recovery to never. Most of the times 10-15 minutes is the average. I rather switch of power and reboot. I thought of a virus or Malware but scans come up negative. S3 settings in bios made no difference. I want to set up new but at the moment cannot afford the will to do it due to many installed applications (Engineering software) et al.

Use hibernation instead. It saves your state to disk as opposed to RAM. Much more reliable, albeit a few seconds slower and a power outage does not result in the hibernation state being lost.

[wily me]

Use hibernation instead. It saves your state to disk as opposed to RAM. Much more reliable, albeit a few seconds slower and a power outage does not result in the hibernation state being lost.

Thanks, never though of that. Will try it and see if it makes a difference.

[JStrike]

Stuxnet was also blown out of proportion.

As was the other viruses/trojans before.

Except the Melissa/I love you one...

Stuxnet was blown out of proportion? Are you high?
The sheer scale and complexity involved with that virus was truly staggering, and it's effect was immense (It had an actual effect on the Geopolitical landscape!!!)

[The_Librarian]

Stuxnet was blown out of proportion? Are you high?
The sheer scale and complexity involved with that virus was truly staggering, and it's effect was immense (It had an actual effect on the Geopolitical landscape!!!)

Stuxnet was targeted at a specific installation/set of machines. I wasn't speaking about its effect on the geopolitical landscape, it was actually more of a damp squib when compared to more infective viruses (slammer etc). But geopolitically, as you said, it had a bigger effect.

Had stuxnet been coded to infect at will... it would've changed the current way we think about security totally - overnight.

[JStrike]

Stuxnet was targeted at a specific installation/set of machines. I wasn't speaking about its effect on the geopolitical landscape, it was actually more of a damp squib when compared to more infective viruses (slammer etc). But geopolitically, as you said, it had a bigger effect.

Had stuxnet been coded to infect at will... it would've changed the current way we think about security totally - overnight.

Slammer just slowed down internet traffic for a while by doing glorified DDOS.
Stuxnet damaged nuclear centrifuges.

It's not even comparable. And as for the complexity of the code involved, Stuxnet makes Slammer look like a script kiddy worm

[Keegan]

Microsoft Security Essentials & common sense. That's all you will ever need.

I agree, that’s all you need,
Flame seems to be the new holy grail of virus's
I assume was designed but top notch experts for government espionage, nobody will waste their time getting flame in our house hold pc's. why would they want screen shots of you surfing porno site? anyway flame had to be introduced somehow, i.e in this case disgusted itself as an windows update i think right? my point is, a virus has to be introduced by the user of the pc. it cannot just drop out the sky and infect your pc.
If you get weird emails with attachments DONT open it, don’t open links you didn’t request for. don’t put in doggie usb drives if you not sure, MSE is quiet good for detecting infected usb flash drive's...

[gregmcc]

my point is, a virus has to be introduced by the user of the pc. it cannot just drop out the sky and infect your pc.

Technically you are correct - viruses require human intervention to replicate. Running a file, visiting a infected site etc.

Worms on the other hand are a different story. Your machine just has to be on the network to be infected. No human intervention is required. If you have a vulnerability that is open and not firewalled off the worm will be able to spread without you even knowing it.

[Elimentals]

/runs linux, not worried for now

+1

Guess that is why I dont have this flame crap everyone is talking about

[gregmcc]

+1

Guess that is why I dont have this flame crap everyone is talking about

You just have a MySQL password vulnerability exploit

[JStrike]

Technically you are correct - viruses require human intervention to replicate. Running a file, visiting a infected site etc.

Worms on the other hand are a different story. Your machine just has to be on the network to be infected. No human intervention is required. If you have a vulnerability that is open and not firewalled off the worm will be able to spread without you even knowing it.

Yep, you are correct. And that is exactly how Stuxnet propogated

[Elimentals]

You just have a MySQL password vulnerability exploit

I fail to see what this has to do with the OS seeing that MySQL run on windows as well?

[JStrike]

+1

Guess that is why I dont have this flame crap everyone is talking about

Well, linux would not have saved the Iranians from Stuxnet or Flame. It would have just caused a change in vectors

[Keegan]

Technically you are correct - viruses require human intervention to replicate. Running a file, visiting a infected site etc.

Worms on the other hand are a different story. Your machine just has to be on the network to be infected. No human intervention is required. If you have a vulnerability that is open and not firewalled off the worm will be able to spread without you even knowing it.

Correct, and on the other hand worms, stuxnet and flame are indented to take away valuable data,
But is your and my data that valuable for the creators of stuxnet and flame...

[Sumio]

Due to the abilities of Flame, whoever was infected by it was hand picked. The people that developed it, definitely up'd the game of virus development.