Hackstacks » Antivirus

Complete List of Virus Removal Tools from Major Anti-Virus Companies

Renjith — Wed, 04 May 2011 16:08:02 +0000

Whichever Anti-virus solution you have in your computer sometimes it may fail to eradicate certain virus, but instead of that the Anti-virus will be intelligent to alert and give you more information about such infection. Trend Micro and Symantec like AV will even take you to their website and let you download the free removal tool for that virus. Many times a Windows security would cease the Anti-virus from removing the infection. In such cases these companies would provide you a custom made removal tool for a specific type of infection and it will be dedicated tool for removing such high-level virus. The tools may have built after the virus has spread on the internet. These small removal tools will be developed by the research team from these companies.

So today we are going to look at various virus removal tools sources available from these major companies.

Symantec http://www.symantec.com/business/security_response/removaltools
Kaspersky http://www.kaspersky.com/virus-removal-tools
McAfee http://home.mcafee.com/VirusInfo/VirusRemovalTools
Trend Micro http://free.antivirus.com/clean-up-tools
Bitdefender http://www.bitdefender.com/site/Downloads/browseFreeRemovalTool
Eset http://www.eset.com/us/download/free-antivirus-utilities

Comment here and help us to update the free tool list.

Microsoft Safety Scanner is a Free Online Virus Scanner

Renjith — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 14:38:54 +0000

At time you will feel like your existing antivirus protection is not doing its job when your computer gets infected. The fact is that there will be a delay to update the antivirus definitions in a client computer and that depends the scheduled time of automatic update configuration or the frequency of update pushing from the Antivirus provider. So an outdated antivirus may not help you always to eradicate the malwares. Even not every antivirus company will release the updates sooner the virus hits the network. So when all these Antivirus solutions fail you can make use of online scanner such as Microsoft Safety Scanner.

The newly released Microsoft Safety Scanner is one of such scanner will download the latest updates from their servers and helps to remove any such infections.

Once the scanner is Downloaded it is ready to run on your computer. The executable file itself is a scanner and once it is executed it will show you options to choose a scan type and upon selection it will start to perform the scan and provide you a result once finished.

Keep in mind that this scan engine will get expire after 10 days. So after 10 days if you would like to run a scan again it would be better to get a recent copy of the same file. The reason why is there are chances you will be running the scanner with older virus definition. Microsoft claims that this scanner will run with any other installed Security software in your computer.

Check it out Microsoft Safety Scanner

Also See: Other online scanners available for free.

A Fake Anti-Virus called Security Shield is spreading in Twitter

Renjith — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 15:48:02 +0000

Be careful when you click on a re-tweeted tweet on twitter because it can be a twitter worm. The new threat is spreading in the form of tweets. You will not be able to recognize it by the URL as it short linked using the Google’s (goo.gl) URL shortening service. So, on the first glance it will look genuine.

But once you have clicked on the link it will redirect you to a Fake Antivirus called “Security Shield” after couple of domain re direction you will reach in a Ukrainian top level domain but that’s not the end ! Again you are re directed to an IP address and that will take you to the rogue anti-virus’s website.

After landing on the rogue AV website you are prompted with a warning saying that your machine is running malicious and you are exhilarated to run a free scan. If you say YES you are busted! The rouge antivirus named Security Shield will be loaded on your computer and start to scan. Finally it will show you a fake list of infected files, once you plan to go ahead with cleanup process it will prompt for a credit card purchase of the Fake Anti-virus.

The Fake Anti-virus uses RSA technology for code obfuscation. The RSA technology is widely used to deploy this type of threats.

How to secure your computer from these threats?

• Update your Anti-virus with latest patches available. (Use live-updates)
• Update windows with latest patches available.
• Try to use industry standard Anti-virus rather than going for free ones. (Because paid ones will have better support against new threats)

Best Tools for optimizing your Netbooks

Renjith — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 10:01:04 +0000

Generally netbooks are with low configuration in terms of the memory and processing capacity. That is because it is meant for portability, single task processing and long battery life. But sometimes improper usage and lack of maintenance can end up in a sluggish netbook performance.

If you are experiencing any of the below you are in serious trouble and your computer needs to be optimized and fine-tuned.

• Very slow boot-ups and log-offs.
• When applications takes forever to open up.
• Internet explorer takes longer time to load webpages.
• Unwanted error messages while booting up.

So we are going to look at few tools which are capable of fine-tuning netbook’s performance. Well let’s split this tools in two few categories on the basis of optimization and cleanup process.

Antivirus – An antivirus scanner can detect if there is any potential threats are hiding in the operating system.

Disk cleanup – A disk cleanup tool will remove unwanted junk files from the hard drive, thus you are benefited by gaining more space on the hard drive.

Defragmentation tool – Disk defragmentation is a process of storing pieces of data on the hard drive in a contiguous way to improve performance while booting or launching an application.

Registry repair tool – There are chances of accumulating lots of unwanted and invalid registry entries when you install lots of applications. Registry repair tool can detect those unwanted and broken registry keys and deletes them.

Panda Cloud Antivirus – Is the best suitable for netbook as it won’t eat much resources in your computer but it is efficient in offering best protection.

100 Large files – Is a free utility to scan and detect the top 100 large files from the local hard disk drive. This can be used to free up some space when you are unsure what is loaded in your hard drive.

CCleaner – Is best free tool for optimization and privacy cleanup process like unwanted registry entry deletion, temp and cache file cleanup, clearing of recent used programs/files information and also it supports almost all the internet browser applications.

Defraggler – Is a quick and portable solution for disc defragmentation. It supports both NTFS and Fat 32 file systems and also I offers a unique feature called individual file defragmentation.

Tweak7 – This tool is designed for windows 7 to have complete control over the operating systems. Actually it does and you can completely tweak your windows 7 for faster performance. Start-up management and Internet optimization are major features.

Glary utilities – It has everything we expected to be in an optimization tool. It give all the features available in CCleaner apart from that it adds a disk analysis, File encryption or decryption and it does memory optimization.

One extra tool to know every bit of your computer

SIW – SIW stands for Software Information for Windows is a complete inventory of your computer which includes the complete in and out information about the software, hardware and network. It supports all version of windows. I recommend you must try it.

Though I mentioned it’s for Netbooks but these tools can be used in any laptops too. I hope it was helpful to cleanup your netbooks. Let us know!

Panda Cloud Antivirus – A Best light weight Antivirus to protect your Netbooks

Renjith — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 08:32:07 +0000

Panda Cloud Antivirus is free, simple and light weight cloud antivirus to protect you Netbook from web threats. It’s the best choice for netbooks as it won’t squeeze the system resource for it to run. Panda Cloud Antivirus available in Free and Pro versions. The cloud antivirus is ready to protect the netbooks from Virus, Ad-ware,Worms, Dialers, Trojans,Jokes, Spyware and Cookies.

Apart from protecting from the above Malware variants it is capable of protecting a pc from Malicious Web & URL Filtering. A security toolbar will get installed on the web browsers along with the Antivirus apllication and it will block and alert you about such malicious websites. Scurity toolbar provides more features such a identity theft protect, quick browser history removal, private browsing etc..

Disabling autorun on the computer is another cool feature integrated in this antivirus which
can actually stop executing any Malwares from the USB drives.

The Pro version of this tool provides extra premium features such as 24×7 VIP support, Behavioral analysis and an Automatic USB vaccination.

Here you can try Panda Cloud Antivirus
Go to the Option window by clicking Blue icon on the below right side on the application window.

In case if you want to try the efficiency of the Security toolbar paste the below link on the web browser.

http://www.cloudantivirus.com/testurlfilter

Try it and Let us know your feedback!

Don’t Throw that Old Computer let’s do Something Better with that

Renjith — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:49:08 +0000

We all will have a desktop computer laying around that corner of your store room. The Pentium III or IV based boxes are not in to the picture since it become unusable because of the out dated hardware and in-compatibility with the new operating systems. So what’s next? Throwing it off? Giving it to charity? Trash it? Charity is a good thing as it will go for good needs but if you planning for something else why don’t you think about giving it a re birth?

Let’s do some refurbishment for that desktop and move that desktop to your living room kitchen or even any common area where every family member has access.

So before we begin let’s gather some information from the desktop such as the Processor speed, Amount of Ram, Hard Drive Capacity and Version of operating system. I would recommend you use Windows XP for home use.

Like I mentioned the reason for a slow computing can be because of less amount of Ram, Unwanted software packages, Virus, insufficient virtual memory etc.

1) Open up the add/remove program and check the installed applications. Understand the applications you will require on that computer and uninstall the remaining ones.

2) Check if you have multiple internet browsers installed? If so try to keep one. I have seen a trend keeping multiple browsers which can actually slow down the computer. I would recommend you download Google Chrome and remove Internet explorer. The reason is here.

3) Understand how much Ram is installed an upgrade it if necessary. (Upgrading is subject to the availability of the hardware)

4) Always set the virtual memory double the amount of Ram installed. (Go to system properties>Advanced>Performance Settings> Advanced Tab Then click on Change Button)

5) Clear Temporary files stored on the computer. You can use the free tools available to clear all the junk files from the Computer. Once that is completed start a complete disc defragment. (A Defragmenting can will result a faster startup and better program accessibility)

6) Delete and clean if there is any virus detected if you are don’t find success, it’s good to reset the computer to factory settings as it will be fully cleaned after kicking out all the junks from it.

7) Use Msconfig.exe (System Configuration) to disable the unwanted startup items and disable the unwanted services to stop. Performing both the activity can result a faster startup.

8 ) Make use of the cloud technology in efficient way by using SkyDrive or Dropbox to store files on the cloud.

9) Update the computer with latest patches available and remember to check if windows firewall is turned on, also install a lite antivirus program. You can consider Avast Free Edition.

So after the refurbishment you can use the desktop to browse the internet, video conferencing even you can setup this desktop as a proxy server to get faster browsing and a firewall to secure your home network!

Microsoft Security Essential is a Free and Best Antivirus

Renjith — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:32:19 +0000

I am certain that a small number of people are aware that Microsoft is providing a Free yet powerful security application against Virus, Spywares and Malwares. It’s called Microsoft Security Essential. it is absolutely free to use if you have genuine Microsoft copy. No more registration and no more subscription expiring! Security Essential is very lite application you will not even believe that it is running in the background as it will use very less amount of CPU resources. Microsoft has developed this security software for the Home Computers or Small business workstations.

It supports Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 Operating systems (For both 32 and 64 bit) Installation of this application is very easy you can download your copy from Microsoft Website. After you complete the windows genuine check the installation will proceed. Once completed it will update the Application with latest virus database on your desktop. The tool supports real time protection for your PC and alerts you when there is a new threat detected. Essentials will run routine scans as per the scans scheduled.