Symantec is WORTHLESS

[chafnerjr]

[Looper]

Num Lock On
Alt-84
Alt-119
Alt-111

[Ruler_Mark]

The mainstream home user anti-viriuses are as effective as a condom with holes in it.

[Hexis]

The mainstream home user anti-viriuses are as effective as a condom with holes in it.

What would you suggest as an alternative?

[Ruler_Mark]

What would you suggest as an alternative?

your screwed. By the time they get the virius to try to make a file signature to search for you can be infected. Once you are infected your computer is perm scarred unless you reformat.

the real ways to protect yourself is to be very proactive on your won and not just expect a program to help you.

There are several routes:

Ghosting: this basically means your computer's os is reset every reboot therefore all viriuses will be null'd but you will keep your media files.

Playing it safe: Dont download ANY free programs online, don't use IE or mozilla or safari(Mac browzer), and lastly if you must run something try it in a VM(virtual machine) or an online virius scanner first to be more safe then just running it.

[Hexis]

Signatures are not always based on malware in the wild. Some rules and signatures are based on the vulnerabilities that the malware exploits. But in general the signatures are always behind the threat. A whole lotta of that risk can be mitigated with a decent Firewall. The consumer tools are actually more aggressive (and protective) than the Enterprise tools. The Enterprise customers have a lot more sensitivity to things breaking or changing.

Using a non mainstream browser (no Z in that word) could help a bit. Web is by far one of the largest vectors for malware infestations. The other biggie is email. Running random executable code downloaded from unknown sources is just asking for trouble.

I think some reasonable steps are to: run some sort of AV, with up to date definitions. Keep up with patches. Run a software firewall with a restrictive outbound policy (make it ask you when a new program wants to connect to anything on the net). Don't run any attachments in email (or IM) unless you very specifically expect them from who they were sent by.

There is no perfect answer (otherwise there would be no malware issues). Well, there is one almost perfect answer: OSX. Sure it costs more for the hardware, but for a number of reasons, there is still no real malware issues on OSX. Every one of my family members that gets a mac is one less person I have to worry about supporting. Ah the joys of being an information security guy.

[Looper]

What would you suggest as an alternative?