Ask HN: Do you still use Antivirus in 2022? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you still use Antivirus in 2022?

5 pointstcgv10 comments

Hi all,

I read some past HN threads on this topic and would like to ask your updated views on this subject.

Thanks in advance!

Ask HN: Do you still use Antivirus in 2019?

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19810163

Ask HN: Do you still use Antivirus in 2017?

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14085104

Ask HN: Do you use an antivirus? (2015)

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10115708

View on HN

I primarily use Windows 7 as my OS with Firefox as a browser, I do use Avast free version and have been using it for last 10 years.

In last few years, virus and malware have been rare for me. Firefox blocks most of the tracking scripts and avast do stop any phishing or malware javascripts.

I personally prefer to not upgrade to windows 10/11 and Windows 7 is serving my purpose well, all the software I use/download are either from official website or from github release archives. My documents have scripts and macros disabled by default. I keep eye on every startup items, background processes and any unwanted resource hogging processes.

I tried to switch to linux for this purpose, but I needed to hack many configs and find drivers with updates. So, I went back with windows 7.

My antivirus is my brain. I use disposable VMs in QubesOS (not connected to the Internet) when opening sketchy PDFs and other documents. I rarely open attachments from email these days, but when I have to, I do it with extreme caution.

Antivirus products these days are not very privacy-aware and most of them upload personal documents to the cloud for 'analysis'. Now and then I run ClamAV on my friend's computers to clean up spyware & trojans, but that's it. Rootkits are a bigger problem though and not so easily removed because of persistence, but they can be removed by doing a clean install or just using a brand new (known clean) VM disk image.

You only run ClamAV on your friends' computers, but don't consider it necessary to run on your own machine?

"but they can be removed by doing a clean install or just using a brand new (known clean) VM disk image."

Not necessarily ?(firmware, bios etc...)

I submit files to VirusTotal [1] all the time. The files are tested against roughly 60 AV tools and through sandboxed analyzers that explain some characteristics and behavior of the files.

[1] - https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/upload

Interesting. So you download files and submit it to VirusTotal before opening locally? Are they free or they charge when you increase usage?

What about private/sensitive files, do you use them or have another procedure in place?

So you download files and submit it to VirusTotal before opening locally?

Yes.

Are they free or they charge when you increase usage?

I believe they do have limits for free usage but I have never hit them. Businesses have paid relationships with them to use their API.

What about private/sensitive files

The only executable files that fit the description would be 0-days that friends created in my prior professional career and those files I knew were malicious by design so I would not submit them unless I wanted to trip up their demonstrations.

For anything that appears to be multimedia but may have come from an untrusted source I will analyze the file myself using open source tools or if in doubt I will just delete the files.

I have used Avira in the past, and Bitdefender up to two or three years ago. But I've stopped using antivirus software. Windows Defender is good enough for my purposes.

Putting a black box in your system to make it more secure ? Yeah, passing on that one.

No.

When I was using windows for gaming my mindset was basically to act like my computer was compromised from day 1 and everything I was typing could be read by someone else. Using an antivirus monitoring everything I do or mining behind my back would be like actually making sure I was compromised from day one....

Anything that needs to be a bit secure goes on linux, and I don't use antivirus on linux either. If you don't download garbage and aren't directly targeted by a state actor or world-class hackers you should be fine in most situations on linux, so I don't see the point. And if you are actually targeted by this kind of people an antivirus won't save you. A sandbox and acting smart might.

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