On 18 September 2015 at 16:55, Fred Cisin <ci...@xenosoft.com> wrote: > CryptoLocker has been around for a year. I don't think that McAfee nor AVG > see it. "Well, it's not a VIRUS, . . ."
Former AVG employee here. I quit; this is not an official statement. CryptoLocker/CryptoWall/etc are *not* a single program. It's a whole family of them. The programs are constantly modified so that the anti-malware doesn't pick them up until it's too late. Antimalware mostly still uses signature databases for identification, plus hooks for suspicious activity. Cryptolocker is not infectious, so it doesn't perform canonical suspicious activities. It opens lots of user data files but so do indexing tools from Windows Search to Google Desktop to Copernic. However, Cryptolocker et al spread by fooling users into running something they shouldn't run. I'm sorry, but you got suckered. Me, I only use Windows if someone pays me to. Life is too short otherwise. My desktop is a Mac (and before that was a Hackintosh); my laptops run Ubuntu. Both are much *much* less work and I don't need to run antimalware. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) • +420 702 829 053 (ČR)