Spyware/Adware/Malware/etc. - Read Me first.

[lucas1985]

I also found (free) Superantispyware at http://www.superantispyware.com/ which is pretty effective for the moment.

It's the best scanner against rootkits, rogue antispy, fake media codecs (Zlobs), Virtumonde/Vundo, general adware and nasty trojans.

[Pcfreakske2000]

I recently found another good anti-malware application : Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.

On the site it says that it's "shareware", but I found out it's actually freeware, without the real-time protection.

Just go to http://www.malwarebytes.org to download it.

[ChronoReverse]

You know, Spybot and Adaware are pretty obsoleted nowadays. Perhaps it's time to change the recommended "Use this first" tools?

[mikeymike]

I still use Spybot on XP machines, it doesn't seem so effective on Vista even if it is given admin privs. I use MalwareBytes on Vista/7 machines.

[chuckula]

I just cleaned the Sirefef trojan off of my fiance's notebook. Microsft Security Essentials (which is actually pretty good and free) could spot it, but it was unable to actually remove the stupid thing. It was residing in a folder that was masked from Explorer and the command prompt too (not a "hidden" folder either, this was something deeper). I ended up using a Linux boot-cd to mount the drive from the outside where the folder was visible and then I nuked it from orbit.. it was the only way to be sure.

I know that my fiance downloaded & installed the malware back on the 2nd... hopefully I'm done with this crap for a while. There's a reason I use Linux whenever I have the choice

[just brew it!]

I just cleaned the Sirefef trojan off of my fiance's notebook. Microsft Security Essentials (which is actually pretty good and free) could spot it, but it was unable to actually remove the stupid thing. It was residing in a folder that was masked from Explorer and the command prompt too (not a "hidden" folder either, this was something deeper). I ended up using a Linux boot-cd to mount the drive from the outside where the folder was visible and then I nuked it from orbit.. it was the only way to be sure.

I know that my fiance downloaded & installed the malware back on the 2nd... hopefully I'm done with this crap for a while. There's a reason I use Linux whenever I have the choice

Yeah, "cloaked" malware seems to be becoming more prevalent. I encountered one myself a few days ago, as described here. It seems that you now need to have rootkit detection/removal tools in your arsenal as well as the tried-and-true virus scanners like MSE and MBAM. I'm not sure what's considered good for rootkit removal these days...

[axeman]

Kaspersky's tdsskiller is the first thing I run whenever some sort of malware is suspected. It's targetted only at certain rootkits, but seems to consistently catch the ones our users keep getting, without being as tedious as using, say RootKitRevealer.