My husband's laptop has been infected with this Antivirus Security Pro malware. My question is, we're paying every month for Verizon's Security Suite and have it downloaded on my laptop, my husband's laptop, and my daughter's laptop. So how did his computer get this malware? Shouldn't Verizon's internet security suite have stopped this?
An anti-virus program isn't guaranteed to catch a malicious program if it's a new variant of what is otherwise, a known infection. Run this tool on each of the affected computers: http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx
McAfee tends to be, IMO, iffy with detecting the latest threats. I tend to have much better results with Panda Cloud AV or Avast! when it comes down to new infections.
Ocne the machines are cleaned up, double check to make sure VISS is in fact working. Use the EICAR test website to check both realtime scanning, and on-demand scanning (eg: Right click on file, and choose scan...): http://www.eicar.org/85-0-Download.html
Lastly, make sure all of your browsers are up to date. If you're browsing with an old browser like IE8 when IE10 is available for your platform, perhaps due to some compatibility issue with a business tool, then do not use that browser for browsing. Use a modern browser, like IE10/IE11, Chrome, or Firefox for browsing instead. Sites will load faster and you'll be hardened against threats a bit more. I also fully endorse removing Java if you have no use for it on your computer. Games like Minecraft and some web utilities may require the use of Java. Otherwise it's just a big security hole as it's an often neglected program as far as updates are concerned. From there, just make sure Adobe Flash is up to date, and if you use Adobe Reader, this is also up to date. Lastly, Windows updates and UAC (Any Microsoft OS newer than Windows XP) should be on and functional. Lastly, to make cleanup of systems extremely easy, never, ever log into a Windows machine and browse as an Administrator user unless you're comfortable doing so. It's much easier to clean up a user account from a virus, and takes more effort to enter in an Administrator password to install someting, than it is to completely remove a nasty infection like a rootkit.
In addition to Smith6612's suggestions beware of flash drives. When you use them to share files or data, it's really easy to transport malware also. One company I worked at actually banned flash drives because so many people were bringing them from home and infecting the business network.
Home networks are another weak spot problem if you allow friends and family to connect.
Stop paying for anti virus. Use something like Avast which is not only one of the top free anti virus programs, it has a boot time scan option, real time sheilds, and Avast itself works wonders.
I'm not very trusting of McAfee (which is what powers the Verizon Suite). Maybe it's gotten better (Norton has for example) but McAfee in my experience slows down your computer and does a bad job cathing viruses/Malware,
Avast (as mentioned before) is good but can be less than intuitive and can messup on cathing malware. Another good option is Microsoft Security Essentials (Yes, Microsoft!) which I've action seen beat Avast sometimes.
Thanks, everyone. His laptop is an older Dell with XP. Perhaps that's why his was attacked and both my Windows 7 laptop and our daughter's Windows 7 laptop are fine? No one else uses our network except our other daughter and her husband when they come to vist, and they haven't been here in months, so that's not where it came from, either. I'll try that link that was posted. Thanks again!
@LanceBabe wrote:Thanks, everyone. His laptop is an older Dell with XP. Perhaps that's why his was attacked and both my Windows 7 laptop and our daughter's Windows 7 laptop are fine? No one else uses our network except our other daughter and her husband when they come to vist, and they haven't been here in months, so that's not where it came from, either. I'll try that link that was posted. Thanks again!
Running XP might have contributed to getting a virus, but often it is just visiting a malicious website. (while computers on the same network can occasionally share a virus, it isn't rare at all for only one computer to get a virus unless their users are visiting the exact same websites.) Using Chrome, which sometimes alerts you if the website you are visiting is known to host viruses, can help to decrease your risk.
^^^^ Good point! Keep in mind for the long term support ends in April 2014 for XP so I would not use it for internet related work after then, MS will not supply security updates.
One minor addition to Smith6612's outstanding reply above , you may want to run your scans in safe mode one the anti virus programs are up to date. Press F8 shortly after power on to get to safe mode option.
Start a new topic or ask questions in the open forum.
