On-line malware scans?

[John Brock]

I've been trying to clean up a friend's PC. I've used Ad-aware,
Spybot, and CWShredder, and the results look pretty good; the PC
is running much faster, and the scans are coming up clean (except
for DSO Exploit, which Spybot reports but doesn't successfully
remove, but which I understand is a false positive due to a minor
bug in Spybot).

So I may be OK, but someone sent me an e-mail suggesting I try
www.pestscan.com, telling me that it does an even better job of
detecting trojans than Ad-aware or Spybot. Perhaps irrationally,
I have been reluctant to use on-scans, fearing that they would give
me false positives in order to sell some product, and also not
really knowing how they worked (in particular whether they leave
anything behind, perhaps an ActiveX control, after they are done).

So I have two questions: is www.pestscan.com trustworthy (and are
there better choices), and how do on-line malware scans in general
work?

 

[null]

I've been trying to clean up a friend's PC. I've used Ad-aware,
Spybot, and CWShredder, and the results look pretty good; the PC
is running much faster, and the scans are coming up clean (except
for DSO Exploit, which Spybot reports but doesn't successfully
remove, but which I understand is a false positive due to a minor
bug in Spybot).

So I may be OK, but someone sent me an e-mail suggesting I try
www.pestscan.com, telling me that it does an even better job of
detecting trojans than Ad-aware or Spybot. Perhaps irrationally,
I have been reluctant to use on-scans, fearing that they would give
me false positives in order to sell some product, and also not
really knowing how they worked (in particular whether they leave
anything behind, perhaps an ActiveX control, after they are done).

So I have two questions: is www.pestscan.com trustworthy (and are
there better choices), and how do on-line malware scans in general
work?

I'm not familiar with pestscan, but a brief look at the web page
suggests it's another of the many spyware scanners that are now so
prolific. You've already used what are probably the best
spyware/adware scanners.

For general malware, you should be using one of the better antivirus
scanner products. For a free scan using the top notch KAV scan engine,
I suggest downloading Antidote:

http://www.vintage-solutions.com/English/Antivirus/Super/

It doesn't offer cleaning, but you can at least build confidence that
a PC is free of general known malware ... viruses, Trojans, Backdoors,
I-worms, RATs, etc. Also, the Sys-Up download at my web site will d/l
Trend's Sysclean ... another good antivirus product that offers
cleaning for hundreds of current malwares (for free). Run it in Safe
mode for the best results.

On-line scanners use activex controls, I suppose, to gain full access
and control of the PC. It's preferable to use resident
scanner/cleaners after booting into Safe mode so malware has less
chance of being active in memory.


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[Adriano]

What version of NOD ... not which version of definitions, but program

version.

I have the latest version: 2.12.3 and yesterday I made the first
update virus definition manually.
Iesterday I have gone to "Event Log" (about update) I saw many
writings in Event: Error connecting to server u5, u3, u4, u6 etc.
Function: Gethostbyname, parameters return value 11004.
However if I make a manually update it is ok, in fatc today I have
just done it and at the end I have seen: The virus signature database
has been updated succesfuly to version 1.965.
I have been to "Event Log" again, and now I see a successfully update
to version 1.965. Therefore everything ok, but always I see that red
icon on the Toolbar and inform me that my NOD32 is down to date.
why?
thanks again

 

[Tx2]

I have the latest version: 2.12.3 and yesterday I made the first
update virus definition manually.
Iesterday I have gone to "Event Log" (about update) I saw many
writings in Event: Error connecting to server u5, u3, u4, u6 etc.
Function: Gethostbyname, parameters return value 11004.
However if I make a manually update it is ok, in fatc today I have
just done it and at the end I have seen: The virus signature database
has been updated succesfuly to version 1.965.
I have been to "Event Log" again, and now I see a successfully update
to version 1.965. Therefore everything ok, but always I see that red
icon on the Toolbar and inform me that my NOD32 is down to date.
why?

I have no idea .... mine works flawlessly, and always has done.
Sorry.

 

[The Judge]

Then it is a connection problem on his end, I run into that once in awhile!!