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Recently, a virus definition update for the widely used anti virus program AVG has wrongfully tagged a Windows file called user32.dll as a malware and considered it as a threat and recommended it to be removed. This is just one of the many flaws that really prove anti virus softwares that exist are not perfect in dealing with its purpose. WHY? For the benefit of the readers who have not a clue in Windows registry system, user32.dll is a vital function of the Windows operating system. You DELETE it, you will have no chance of booting up your PC again. Luckily for Windows Vista, the Problematic tagging is limited only to Windows XP. AVG on the other hand has updated the definition and resolved the false tagging.
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Avast Home Edition 4.8.1229.80923 is a free antivirus, and it was released this year September 23, 2008. Even if it was just released less than a month (since the date today is Oct 8), 30,937,233 people have already downloaded this program at Download.com. Even the Editor of Download.com has given Avast Home Edition a perfect score 5/5. It just proves that Avast Home Edition is a program worthy for our attention. This program has the following workings, according to the publisher’s description: On demand scanner with skinnable simple interface, choose what you want to scan and just press the play button; On access scanner, special providers to protect the most of available e-mail clients; Instant messaging–ICQ, Miranda; Network traffic–intrusion detection, lightweight firewall; P2P protection for Kazaa, BitTorrent; Web shield–monitors and filters all HTTP traffic; NNTP scanner–scans all Usenet Newsgroup traffic and all operations with files on PC; Boot time scanner–scans disks in the same way and in the same time as Windows CHKDSK does.
Technically all computers all over the globe suffer form the attacks of computer viruses, Trojans and malicious software – from home-based units, small and medium-enterprises to giant business and even government bodies. The bottom-line is that the internet is a fertile land to do crimes. It only means that a considerably large amount of money can be illegally made from creating these viruses and distributing them over the network.
The damage done by these viruses and malware can reach to billions of dollars every year. And according to some research made by Computer Economics, the lost in the world economy is close to $18 billions and is having the trend towards a growth rate of 30% to 40% annually.
In the passed few years, there has been computer viruses that took great effect on global economic growth. However, there are these viruses that have cause millions, worse, billions of dollars loss. Here are the top 10 most destructive computer viruses of all time according to techweb:
1. CIH (1998)
Estimated Damage: 20 to 80 million dollars worldwide, countless amounts of PC data destroyed
Unleashed from Taiwan in June of 1998
2. Melissa (1999)
Estimated Damage: 300 to 600 million dollars
3. ILOVEYOU (2000)
Estimated Damage: 10 to 15 billion dollars
4. Code Red (2001)
Estimated Damage: 2 billion and 600 million dollars (2.6B $)
5. SQL Slammer (2003
Estimated Damage: Because SQL Slammer erupted on a Saturday, the damage was low in dollars and cents. However, it hit 500,000 servers world wide and actually shut down South Korea’s online capacity for 12 hours.
6. Blaster (2003)
Estimated Damage: 2 to 10 billion dollars, hundreds of thousands of infected PCs
7. Sobig.F (2003)
Estimated Damage: 5 to 10 billion dollars, over 1 million PCs infected
8. Bagle (2004)
Estimated Damage: Tens of millions of dollars…and counting
9. MyDoom (2004)
Estimated Damage: At its peak, slowed global Internet performance by 10 percent and Web load times by up to 50 percent
10. Sasser (2004)
Estimated Damage: Tens of millions of dollars
The effect of computer virus is really serious because it can harm not only computers, same is true with the life of others.
According to studies done by a German computer magazine in 2007, the 17 different anti-virus programs they tested only detected only 20-30% of the malware they introduced on the computers. In 2006, a similar study yielded much better detection rates of 50-60%.
These results are not encouraging and seem to indicate that anti-virus programmers who update virus definition files are not able to keep up with hackers and malware creators. Also, the “bad guys” have easy access to the same anti-virus programs and even free online services that test suspicious files, and thus they are able to test if their creations can get through the latest anti-virus programs before they release them.
This has been the source of arguments online for a long time now, but the answer is: yes, some anti-virus programs definitely do. They have to screen every bit of data that enters your computer for potentially harmful trojans, malware, and viruses. Thus they take up CPU resources, memory, and disk activity.
According to this study, the top offender is Norton Internet Security 2006. It delays your boot up time by almost 50%! At second place is McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8, followed at third place by Norton Internet Security 2007.
So does this mean you shouldn’t install anti-virus software? Of course not. Just don’t use those specific products if you want a PC that boots up and runs quickly.
