Antimalware Software

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Today or something, the AV started to show "Updating for first time" now and again. Just now, trying to simply show the window (was in background), it hung somehow, I system right-clicked to close it.
It closed altogether (the tray thing gone, see); no prompts that I wasn't protected though, I got concerned, opened the thing from the desktop icon - and it showed as if it just got installed.
Quite funny - I was offered to choose options, etc. Then I got excited if it "forgot" everything - no, it didn't.
Quite funny...

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

I'm not sure why the firewall alerts are happening, unless your AV settings changes try to "phone" home and run into firewall issues when trying to do that. I have found a review at VirusBulletin from 2013 that does describe Unthreat as having stability issues: https://www.virusbtn.com/virusbulletin/archive/2013/04/vb201304-comparative#id5403118

Whether your various issues are related to that remains a bit of a guess. One of the possible risks of using a less-popular AV, however, is stumbling into peculiar issues of one kind or another. There may not be enough users and the company may be too small to iron out all the bugs. The more widely used the software, the more exposure it receives to various systems and software suites to help expose (and hopefully develop fixes for) bugs. That's perhaps the main reason a lot of folks recommend something like Avast as a free AV - it's quite widely used.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

One of the possible risks of using a less-popular AV, however, is stumbling into peculiar issues of one kind or another. There may not be enough users and the company may be too small to iron out all the bugs. The more widely used the software, the more exposure it receives to various systems and software suites to help expose (and hopefully develop fixes for) bugs.

Good point!
I'll bear that in mind.

By the way, it somehow recuperated about yesterday. Nice for now...

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Black, I have still installed that 360.
It is quite a powerful devil; it didn't offer any "advanced" or whatever options during/upon the install, then earnestly suggested some "Full something", I had little choice and commenced...
It doubled my disk space...

Well, it didn't wiped much in my Firefox, but it wiped out a bit of something in Chrome - I lost my tabs and had to restore them manually.
Now with Opera [11] - I guess it didn't even consider it a browser and left it alone*;)*

Found some threats, yeah... I'll ask next time.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

@blackbird71.

Here it is: .
I couldn't seem to copy the text from there. And I haven't made any search for that yet...

(I couldn't find any info there what must be the quarantine period.
It's kinda weird they "forgot" to include quite a number of things in the user interface. I sent them feedback...)

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

The dbghelp.dll file may legitimately exist in multiple versions and places, since it is a debugging help library. Typically, a basic version is included with all Windows releases, and modified versions are often included with specific applications, tailored to those apps. If you have Open Office installed on your system (I don't), the file may be a legitimate one for that app. You'd have to inquire in the OpenOffice forum to find out for sure. If it is legitimate, the AV entry would be a false alarm, of course.

Likewise, there are legitimate driver.cab files that contain a library of the various drivers for an OS or for a given computer model (eg: Dell). Again, these files may have been misidentified by the AV as malicious (false alarms), but a lot depends on the legitimate location where (or even if) those files are supposed to appear on your system. Malware often hijacks a legitimate Windows or other software file name, but almost always puts that malicious file in a place it's not supposed to be for the legitimate software. My suspicion (and its only that, since I'm not familiar with your system) is that all three quarantined files are false alarms, in which case they probably ought to be restored. The two driver.cab files were picked up by heuristic analysis, which can tend toward much higher false alarm rates than signature analysis. It's unclear exactly what the identification method for dbghelp.dll was, but citing behavior as "high risk" also implies heuristics were used there as well.

You'll have to contact the AV company to find out whether there's a time limit on how long quarantined files are kept on the system by their AV. Many well-known AV's keep them there forever, so that a user can restore them later on when he eventually stumbles upon a system hiccup caused by the quarantined (and hence, unavailable) file. But that's not to say 360 does it that way.

Another thing you could do is to restore the 3 files via the AV and upload copies of them to VirusTotal or Jotti to get a consensus opinion from other AV's about whether they're problematic. If they are, then have 360 re-quarantine them via another scan and use the quarantine panel to delete them. If VirusTotal or Jotti says they're OK, leave them restored and (if possible) enter them as exceptions to 360's future scanning.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Thanks, Black!

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

Another thing you could do is to restore the 3 files via the AV and upload copies of them to VirusTotal or Jotti to get a consensus opinion from other AV's about whether they're problematic.

Googling, I could see that both are scan services, though the former had a link to some "Community" - while the other didn't.
Do you suggest I resort to the community or your upload means they do "pick-scans" of sorts?

Ah, checked Wikipedia...
:rolleyes:

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

Perhaps you've already figured it out from Wiki... but if you go to https://www.virustotal.com, it shows a box where you select the file from your system that you want to upload to VirusTotal. It will then scan the file against a multitude of virus scanners and provide you the results. To use it, you'll probably have to first un-quarantine the files and upload each from its original location, since AV quarantining usually involves the AV altering the suspect file itself to make it unexecutable (hence quarantining it). It has to be reconstructed by the AV via un-quarantining to make it recognizable by the scanners at VirusTotal (or Jotti, if you use it).

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

360 is kinda crappy - though powerful.
I've sent feedback twice about the lack of settings etc., and posted on their Fb page. No meaningful answer yet... :wait:

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

The recent sweep, my 360 seems to have wiped out my RealPlayer's Library - at least no playlists were found, which had been a few definitely.

It cleans good though...

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

How much traffic will it usually take to install a copy of BitDefender?
I'm on a limited package right now...
And is this the right page to take it?

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

The page you reference has the name appearance of perhaps a stub installer. I believe the actual BitDefender install file is around 6-7 Mb, which if accurate, is not that bad - but I've never used it so I can only go by what a number of Googled postings have mentioned the size as being. Some of these AV installers are designed to go out and immediately pull down a bunch of other files from the server - even an entirely different, new program version compared with the installer's version, so it's kind of hard to tell for sure unless you can find somebody who's actually been through the process recently and paid close attention to the traffic sizes.

One possible other issue is the periodic signature update size - some users report it runs as much as 60 MB in size, and is supposedly default-scheduled multiple times a day, though it seemingly can be set to less frequent settings. Again, all this is based on postings I've read, not on first-hand experience. You might want to spend a little 'quality' time sifting through Google responses to dig further into the update size and frequency questions. At least the initial download should be a one-time cost regarding its size.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

I believe the actual BitDefender install file is around 6-7 Mb...

Megabit or megabite (MB)?

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

One possible other issue is the periodic signature update size - some users report it runs as much as 60 MB in size, and is supposedly default-scheduled multiple times a day...

Would you mind explaining it in some plain English?:rolleyes:

Anyway, where shall one find the right copy of BitDefender?

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

In plainer English (hopefully), most AVs routinely check for updates to their virus signature database daily or even multiple times each day. Some of them update by downloading the entire signature database, some by simply adding changes to an existing local database. Each update size depends on how the AV program is coded or whatever changes (if any) have accumulated. How often the AV updates is determined by a setting in the AV program, with some default value always applied at install.

If you're dealing with a limited data package, how big a typical update would be and how often it updates are of very real concern to you. Some BitDefender users in the past few years have complained that their typical update size was 60 Mbytes, and their program's default setting was to check for updates multiple times each day. When BitDefender happened to update their own server database frequently for whatever reasons, then the limited-data-plan users would be facing fairly large downloads multiple time per day, based on the default AV settings. Since the download size would have to be whatever it would be, the recommended solution was always to reduce the checking setting to no more than once a day, if even that often.

My point was only to make you aware that the update size and rate of occurrence are possibly more important issues than the initial AV program download size if you're under a tight user data cap. Since I don't use BitDefender, you'll have to research this deeper to find more current or reliable answers for your particular situation. You might try BitDefender's forums for some better and more up-to-date details for their AV.

As far as program downloads, I always go right to the maker's own site. It's safer and usually more reliable than 3rd parties with their risks of out-of-date programs or bundling with trash-ware. Even if the maker's site uses a stub installer, it shouldn't magnify the overall program download size much at all, compared with a 3rd-party executable file. So in this case, I'd use BitDefender's own site to get the software.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

1. Is that bitdefender.com their own site?
2. How does it get along with the system's regular AVs?

[blackbird71]

blackbird71 last edited by

I apologize for my confusing the BitDefender AV product's size with the anti-adware product you referenced a few posts up. I ran down the wrong rabbit-hole after that. Their anti-adware product is around 45 Mbytes in size and can be used as-is without an OS installation. It doesn't really update periodically, so that kind of data loading won't be a problem for a user with a data cap. The product generally is set up to use in a manual scanning manner.

However, some BD ART users have apparently run into conflict issues with certain AV's, Sophos in particular. BitDefender recommends when doing a scan that the user take their system offline, shut off any resident AV, perform their BitDefender Adware Removal Tool scan and removals (if any), then shut it off, reactivate the resident AV, and finally put the system back on line. There can also be conflicts with other anti-adware tools if they are active/running at the same time as a BitDefender scan. This is not uncommon for many (but not all) anti-malware/adware tools - they tend to not like each other very much if running at the same time. Sometimes this has to do with one tool activating an adware file to remove it, but the other tool seeing that and trying to grab control to kill it at the same time - most software doesn't tolerate that kind of competitive behavior very well.

Yes, bitdefender.com is the actual BitDefender site and a safe place to download from.

[magaretz]

magaretz last edited by

Well, my limitations are that the trial ends not further than in a month - then it's definitely uncertain.

[A Former User]

A Former User last edited by

What trial, Magaretz?