PSA: MS Security Essentials might not be very effective against malware

[inf1nity]

I had MSE on my bro's laptop. However when I scanned it with MBAM, it threw up a total of 26 infections. Out of these, 4 were trojan horses and rest of them were PUPs.

After seeing the result, I removed MSE and replaced it with Bitdefender free, which detected an additional 15 threats.

Whereas MSE, in all these years, had never detected a single threat. It kept telling me that the system was clean.

So folks depending on MSE for protection, you might wanna get something better. I'd recommend either avast or Bitdefender. They both have free versions and have served me well. I have been using avast for 2 years and Bitdefender, although I have used only for 2 days, I think its good at catching malware.

 

[inf1nity]

Bitdefender results-

 

[akugami]

MSE has always been a "better than nothing" solution. It WILL catch viruses but not anything new. It's purpose was always to catch anything obvious. It also assumes you are practicing safe browsing habits and not download all kinds of crazy junk.

I install MSE on systems but only because it is CRITICAL that there are no popups and that it is better than nothing. The systems we deploy should never be used to browse the web (which they always do anyways). Our software operates in full screen mode and at no time must there be a popup ad or something, which a lot of the "free" antivirus solutions do. If someone can point me to a lightweight antivirus that has absolutely zero popups, I'd gladly use that instead.

 

[cubby1223]

There is something legal about anti-virus software and the handling of PUPs, whether they can or cannot detect & remove them. Malwarebytes doesn't have such restrictions and is free to detect & remove them by default. Someone else can add info if they know the actual situation. Conduit Search Protect is one of the most common PUP infections, and no anti-virus software I'm aware of detects & removes it, despite it being around a very long time. But Malwarebytes does remove it.

As for anti-virus software, MSE is one of the worst. That's widely known in the tech world. But it's free and doesn't annoy the hell out of you with random pop-up upsell messages like certain other free anti-virus software does, or the subscription renewal pop-ups of paid software, so the commoners all want MSE. And in the support field, any recommendation you make for a/v software will bite you in the ass the first time that person has any infection. Since we all know computers with a/v software will get infected, it's a losing proposition to be in the a/v recommendation business.

 

[KiethHoyt]

I have always found that Bitdefender was reliable. However, I had Malwarebytes on my personal PC and it was halting many of my system updates from downloading. I removed Malwarebytes, re-downloaded Bitdefender, and then the system updates were able to push through.

Also, it seems to have been blocking my MSE from downloading. I doubt my computer will ever be attacked since I only use it for gaming, so I really don't think that I need much protection.

 

[inachu]

It has always been this way and was never designed to be a cure all for any and all infections. Even an article mentioned that the antivirus company they acquired that became MS SE knew they would not be the total solution.

This was then Mcafee and Norton Antivirus firms even made their own announcements that nothing could compare to their industry grade of protection and Microsoft agreed with those statements.

So as the other poster stated above "it is just better to have than to have nothing at all."

Because just roll the dice here and lets say they were the best ones out there when it came as OEM installed on day of purchase. Then there would be compatibility issues and blue screens as I am sure most of you have experience a pc lock up when incompatible software competing for the attention of the hard drive locks up against each other.

 

[Berryracer]

If someone can point me to a lightweight antivirus that has absolutely zero popups, I'd gladly use that instead.

http://www.360safe.com/internet-security.html

Results:

AV-Comparatives - Real World Tests

 

[onething]

Wow, trend micro with 100%? Shiiiiiiiiiiiiit

 

[JEDIYoda]

I used MBAM on all my computers! I never had so many false positives in all my life!! I know use Bit Defender and something else which shall remain nameless...

 

[Victorian Gray]

I used MBAM on all my computers! I never had so many false positives in all my life!! I know use Bit Defender and something else which shall remain nameless...

You're not going to share your secret sauce? :'(

 

[John Connor]

I believe M$ stated MSE was only to best used with something else, yet I see tons of idiots on the net say, USE MSE IT WORKS FOR ME! Yeah, sure buddy...

I use Bitdefender Free and Sandboxie. Configure Sandboxie access to your profile and bookmarks and set Sandboxie to delete contents on exit. This is with Pale Moon and Firefox. I have yet to figure out how to set the settings with Cyberfox which I want to make my main browser because of the new crap Pale Moon update. I haven't updated Pale Moon because of it and now I'm missing out on security.

 

[Berryracer]

I believe M$ stated MSE was only to best used with something else, yet I see tons of idiots on the net say, USE MSE IT WORKS FOR ME! Yeah, sure buddy...

I use Bitdefender Free and Sandboxie. Configure Sandboxie access to your profile and bookmarks and set Sandboxie to delete contents on exit. This is with Pale Moon and Firefox. I have yet to figure out how to set the settings with Cyberfox which I want to make my main browser because of the new crap Pale Moon update. I haven't updated Pale Moon because of it and now I'm missing out on security.

and that`s what kills me........

90% of the people on forums online go like "I've been using MSE for years and never had a virus"

well how would they know they never did?!? it's not like the virus is going to flash messages on the desktop saying "hey you've been infected"

whenever I run a scan on any system that has MSE on I find so many viruses.

MSE = is just as good as having no AV unless one considers that if it finds really old malware good......that's what it's good for, old viruses......none of the new ones

 

[Berliner]

Neither MSE nor any other av program is a completely secure solution.

What bugs ME about MSE, is that it keeps bugging me every month.

 

[PliotronX]

No AV is going to protect idiots from themselves. MSSE is best used as an indicator, not a total security solution. The majority of the time, it will detect something but not remove it completely obviously, but that is where a second layer of security comes in. MSSE and a cautionary scan with Malwarebytes and/or Adwcleaner is the least resource intensive, nearly complete security solution and absolutely free. The problem lies with the users. Show me an AV that will keep a system 100% clean in a real-time fashion. It does not exist and worser still, AV's will slow the system down especially when the users install multiple scanners and if they let the subscription expire, the AV becomes adware itself.

 

[PliotronX]

I used MBAM on all my computers! I never had so many false positives in all my life!! I know use Bit Defender and something else which shall remain nameless...

Must have some crazy stuff on your systems, I have never encountered FP with MBAM that wasn't a crack or something and I have used it on hundreds of systems since it became a premier malware removal tool.

 

[ControlD]

Must have some crazy stuff on your systems, I have never encountered FP with MBAM that wasn't a crack or something and I have used it on hundreds of systems since it became a premier malware removal tool.

Just out of curiosity, why is it that things like no-cd cracks trip malware/virus scan programs pretty much 100% of the time? Is there something in the executable header information that no longer matches the actual code?

 

[John Connor]

Bitdefender Free and Sandboxie make a great combination.

 

[Ketchup]

and that`s what kills me........

90% of the people on forums online go like "I've been using MSE for years and never had a virus"

well how would they know they never did?!?

Every computer that I have removed a virus from came from a person that knew something was wrong. People aren't stupid. And I will go on to say that most of these people were using an antivirus other than MSE at the time.

Your point somewhat valid, except that anyone could ask you the same thing. I know, a website did a couple tests and tells you that something is the best.

This is why I always harp on safe browsing habits. Your AV should be there for a very odd scenario, not to protect people from clicking on everything they see.

 

[Berryracer]

Every computer that I have removed a virus from came from a person that knew something was wrong. People aren't stupid. And I will go on to say that most of these people were using an antivirus other than MSE at the time.

Your point somewhat valid, except that anyone could ask you the same thing. I know, a website did a couple tests and tells you that something is the best.

This is why I always harp on safe browsing habits. Your AV should be there for a very odd scenario, not to protect people from clicking on everything they see.

no question about that and I agree with you but to those on tech savvy people, believe me, they wouldn't notice a thing other than if their computer was super slow.

That being said, an AV alone as you said will not protect you, I have to always install an adblocker, even a hosts file for the super click everything kinda ones... and enable PUP detection if the AV I installed had that option......still not enough......a bit of common sense always helps

 

[JEDIYoda]

Must have some crazy stuff on your systems, I have never encountered FP with MBAM that wasn't a crack or something and I have used it on hundreds of systems since it became a premier malware removal tool.
__________________

my experience differs from yours....sorry..too bad everybody can`t have the same experience...

 

[JEDIYoda]

Bitdefender Free and Sandboxie make a great combination.

shhhhhh..........

 

[jcgriff2]

I would suggest that you use whatever anti-virus app you prefer + Windows Firewall.

The "Internet Security Suites" contain 3rd party firewalls which often end up blocking local NETBIOS ports used by system services and cause them to hang or crash.

It's not uncommon to find a trail of 0xc0000005 exception errors in the wake of a 3rd party firewall.

0xc5 = memory access violation, a.k.a., "access denied"

The crashes can easily be found in The Reliability Monitor -

http://www.sysnative.com/forums/win...tor-windows-10-8-1-8-7-and-windows-vista.html

 

[JEDIYoda]

I would suggest that you use whatever anti-virus app you prefer + Windows Firewall.

The "Internet Security Suites" contain 3rd party firewalls which often end up blocking local NETBIOS ports used by system services and cause them to hang or crash.

It's not uncommon to find a trail of 0xc0000005 exception errors in the wake of a 3rd party firewall.

0xc5 = memory access violation, a.k.a., "access denied"

The crashes can easily be found in The Reliability Monitor -

http://www.sysnative.com/forums/wind...ows-vista.html

never ever had that issue......

 

[mikeymikec]

I had MSE on my bro's laptop. However when I scanned it with MBAM, it threw up a total of 26 infections. Out of these, 4 were trojan horses and rest of them were PUPs.

I could write pretty much these exact findings for every anti-virus product out there.

 

[mikeymikec]

Every computer that I have removed a virus from came from a person that knew something was wrong.

This applies to almost all of my experiences with customers. I have occasionally seen it when a customer complains that they can't install xyz and it turned out to be malware that was interfering with the process.

What bugs ME about MSE, is that it keeps bugging me every month.

The only reason I can think of is that its default settings direct it to do a scheduled scan on a regular basis (and if it doesn't get a chance to do that, it nags the user about it). This can be switched off in its settings. Apart from that, the only other reason why I'd expect to hear from it would be if it detected that it wasn't running properly.

90% of the people on forums online go like "I've been using MSE for years and never had a virus"

Again, I've heard this line for just about every security product out there.

---

As a side note, I wonder whether most of my customers are answering truthfully when they say they don't know where the crapware came from. I suspect however that a lot of people can't tell the difference between a browser pop-up and a message thrown up by their anti-virus.

This BOFH story is a pretty good representation of my feelings on the topic of AV

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/08/bofh_2014_episode_11/