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Antivirus-less setup

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Ath:
There was a meme at one point that a Windows Box "busy patching" with no AV would get hacked in a matter of hours
-TaoPhoenix (September 28, 2012, 02:50 AM)
--- End quote ---
That was for Windows XP without any service pack or update applied. And it would be infected within 18 minutes, on average :o

vlastimil:
I am not running any anti-virus on my main PC and have no (apparent) problems. Once every few years, I install something and let it test the machine and then uninstall it - in most cases, it finds nothing or some false positives.

If you decide to go this way, you MUST keep your system updated or be behind a good, preferably non-standard firewall. Modems usually have firewalls configured to kill any incoming packet, which is fine. If you are not behind a modem, you should probably install a custom firewall - one that is not too popular (which means not a valuable target for hackers).

Also, using a less popular browser used to be good way to avoid infection. But gone are the days when IE dominated, these days IE, FF and Chrome are popular enough to be targeted by hackers. Chrome and FF are at least often updated, so vulnerabilities should not exist for too long. Opera is still probably the safest choice due to its market share...

And of course using common sense when installing/running applications is invaluable.

Stoic Joker:
Heuristics be damned, even with AV running on full KiLL the first ~50,000 that encounter a new bug/exploit are effectively, completely unprotected. While I am currently still running MSE, before starting that experiment I ran without anything other than common sense and the 80/20 rule.

Security is something that is practiced...not installed.

tomos:
Does anyone here run their primary machine without a resident (always on) antivirus?-apankrat (September 28, 2012, 02:30 AM)
--- End quote ---

what other security measures do you take  (if any) ?

I would say in the last 8 or 9 years, my Anti-Virus has found one 'true'-positive - and even that was a bit of a fail cause it (AV) was completley closed down by the drive-by download that 'installed' the file (that I then manually killed/removed).

Point being,
I think I could and would survive quite well without anti-virus; with windows firewall. I also have Winpatrol pro - I'd keep that, it has been helpful keeping me informed what just installed software is trying to get up to.

apankrat:
what other security measures do you take  (if any) ?-tomos (September 28, 2012, 07:23 AM)
--- End quote ---

I rarely install anything. Whatever I install, I check the signatures and run it through online multi-scanners. I have all but TCP/IP switched off on all interfaces and I'd test the box now and then with rootkit and antivirus scanners. The reason I decided to bring this subject up is that I had my mail client crash while opening an email. The email was not malicious, but it made me realize that the mail client really needs to be sandboxed or isolated. Similarly, the browser needs to be isolated too, but it's of a lesser importance, because I can usually control where I surf (while with emails I don't control what I receive).

I wish there were an equivalent of chroot jail on Windows, but there's not. So what I ended up doing is setting up the mail client in a VM. It's not the most convenient option, but it's a very simple one.

Does anyone have any experience with Sandboxie or something similar? Sounds right, but not sure how well it works.

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