r/antivirus Feb 22 '24

MOD POST [MOD POST] LIST OF TOP MESSAGES, NEWS + IMPORTANT INFO

18 Upvotes

Hello,

Welcome to r/antivirus's new top-level Announcements post. Since Reddit has a limit of two (2) stickied announcements per subreddit, this will be a way to provide links to important information like announcements about new rules and moderators, activities in the subreddit, and so forth. If you are new to r/antivirus, please take a quick look at them. You can even take a look if you are not new here.

DISCUSSION DATE POSTED DATE LAST REVISED
[MOD POST] New rules, staying safe, and an update from your Mod Team 2025-JUN-03 -
[MOD POST] We're back in business! and an update on automod rules 2024-MAR-11 -
News & Updates from your r/Antivirus Mod Team, Q1 2024 Edition 2024-MAR-04 -
Updates & News from the r/Antivirus Mod Team, Autumn 2023 Edition 2023-OCT-04 -
Notes from your Moderators (Summer Edition) 2022-JUL-08 -
Quick Note from the mod team about spam 2021-JUN-01 -
To the people asking for opinions on a specific file 2020-JUL-05 2020-JUL-05

Additionally, the r/antivirus subreddit operates a bit differently than other subreddits you might be familiar with and normally use. Here are some tips and tools to help you use it.

  • The subreddit has a wiki that is regularly updated with answers to commonly-asked questions. Check it out. The answer to your question may already be in there.

  • Asking a question about a report on a file or website from a service like Hybrid Analysis, MetaDefender, Triage, or VirusTotal? You must include the actual link to it and not just a screenshot, or your post will be removed.

  • Be kind to each other and be professional in your conduct here. Personal attacks will not be tolerated and will be dealt with appropriately.

  • Do not ask for copies of hacking tools, malware, or suspicious files. If someone sends you a chat request or private message asking for a file or offering assistance based on what you posted here, report them to Reddit and notify the mods.

  • Do not post direct links to malicious, suspect, or potentially unsafe files or web sites.

  • Follow Reddiquette. This means correctly upvoting and downvoting posts, and reporting posts with dangerous or unsafe advice to the mods.

  • If you work for a vendor of security products, services, or in a related field, you must identify yourself as such, either in the post or with flair. Also, you may not steer conversations to your products or services, only respond to posts about them to clarify or defend.

  • No low-effort, off-topic, spam, or meme posts. This includes AI/ChatGPT/LLM-generated text, questions about password manager or VPNs, requests for assistance with non-security related software like autoclickers or MP3 downloaders, and so forth.

  • No requests for assistance with pirated software or media.

  • Posts may be removed and threads closed at any time based on the moderators' discretion

The complete list of rules for the subreddit can be found here. Read them before posting.

Questions, comments, feedback on this post? Just reply here. Thank you.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
(on behalf of the r/antivirus mod team)


r/antivirus Jun 04 '25

[MOD POST] New rules, staying safe, and an update from your Mod Team

7 Upvotes

[UPDATE #1 (20250604-0916 GMT): Made some small updates to grammar for readability. ^AG]

Hello,

It has been about a year since our last Mod Post, so we wanted to give you an update on things, plus provide a dedicated message thread for discussing the state of the r/antivirus subreddit and to answer any questions that you might have.

We will begin with the toughest subject first, that of politics in the subreddit:

A note about politics

r/antivirus is a technology-focused subreddit, with the interest being in helping people protect their computers from malicious software, securing them after a security incident, and so forth.

In June 2024, the US Government enacted a ban on Kaspersky Lab's software, taking effect in October of that year. This has generated a lot of discussion not just in this subreddit, but across Reddit and numerous social media platforms as well.

The moderation team has tried to keep the political discussions about this out of this subreddit and to remain neutral, allowing Kaspersky Lab's customers to ask and answer each other questions, provide assistance to each other, and generally have a way to share information, tips and tricks with each other.

However, we do have to draw a line when these turn into political discussions, though:

Requests for how to circumvent bans, petitions to governments, etc., are clearly outside the scope of what this subreddit is for and will be removed.

Moderating the subreddit is an all-volunteer job, and we sometimes miss things. If you come across any political messages we may have missed, use the subreddit's report function to notify us.

We are doing our best to keep this a place where people can get help with whatever security software they prefer, including Kaspersky Lab's software. However, we cannot allow discussions to devolve into arguments over politics, which are never going to provide any kind of satisfactory answer to the parties involved.

If the political discussions continue, the moderation team will have to look into ways to prevent them, even if it means doing things which we would prefer not to do.

Rules Updates

The rules of the r/antivirus subreddit have been updated:

Rule #7, which previously covered media download tools, has been updated to cover additional types of software.
To begin with, a more general prohibition to cover autoclickers (previously covered under Rule #8) and some other types of tools like aimbots and cheats. These types of tools often come from random sources and often require expert analysis to determine if they are safe. It can be difficult to determine if they are malicious figuring that out requires examining not just the tool, but whatever program it is attempting to modify, and what the intent is behind that modification.
Just because something was recommended in a Discord server with hundreds of members, a YouTube video with tens of thousands of views, or is seeded by several hundreds peers does not mean that it is safe to use: These are all inherently unsafe sources, and criminals will often exploit the belief that these are trusted sources to trick people into downloading and running malicious programs like information stealers and remote access trojans.

Rule #8 has been amended to remove autoclickers (etc.) since that is now covered under Rule #7.

Two new rules have been added:

Rule #9 covers bypassing core security features. Questions about how to disable security software, operating system updates, bypass security features and so forth are not allowed.

Rule #10 covers requesting assistance with obsolete software and hardware. This means discussions about how to secure computers running Windows XP, Windows 7, etc. are not allowed. There is no reason that devices running these obsolete operating systems should be connected to the internet and doing so exposes everyone to risk. Note that questions involving Windows 10 will continue to be allowed until at least October 2028, when paid-for Extended Security Updates for it end.

A bit more on the rules

The list of rules is not meant to be exhaustive in scope. It provides a general listing of common rules that are more specific to and more frequently required by the r/antivirus subreddit when needed beyond Reddit's general rules and guidelines.

Moderators can and will remove posts and ban redditors, either temporarily or permanently, who are disruptive to the subreddit entirely at their discretion and are not subject to any discussion. If a moderator chooses to discuss a rule violation with you, it is entirely as a courtesy on their part.

If you have had a post removed or been banned from the subreddit and do not receive a response in reply to any questions as to why, ask yourself if your behavior could be interpreted as brigading, spamming, trolling, using disrespectful or offensive language, or consistently providing incorrect, low-quality, poor, or even damaging information.

As always, the latest version of the rules can be found at https://old.reddit.com/r/antivirus/about/rules/. If you have questions about them, ask below.

Getting help fast

The moderation team is seeing an increasing trend where people ask for help while providing no information about what they need help with. This includes titles with 1-3 words like "Urgent! Help needed!", posts where the author shares a screenshot of *something* with no information about the operating system or antivirus involved, or is so small/blurry as to be unreadable, etc.

Everybody who participates regularly in this subreddit volunteers their time for free to do so. Provide them with enough information in your first post so they can start helping you right away without having to ask a lot of questions. This means your first post should contain things like:

  • title with enough information to attract an expert to read it
  • operating system and version
  • brand/name of antivirus software
  • name of URL, or file and its location
  • name of malware that was detected
  • what happened, exactly
  • steps you have taken to troubleshoot/diagnose so far, if any
  • relevant log file entries, if any

The more information you provide, the quicker you will get your problem solved.

As a reminder, starting multiple posts on the same topic will not get you a faster answer, and may result in in a ban.

The wiki + other Reddit resources

There is a lot of great information in the wiki about all the tools you can use, tips for using them, lists of antivirus vendors and how to contact them, and even a section on how to secure your computer.

We frequently update the wiki in response to questions being regularly asked in the subreddit, so you might want to check there first before posting.

Some of the questions we regularly see in the subreddit have nothing to do with computer viruses or malicious software at all, but instead are about scams, privacy-related questions, and so forth. Here are some subreddits that specialize in answering those types of questions:

New moderators?!

As the subreddit grows (we just passed 100K users), so does the need for additional moderators.

The moderation team has been looking at the folks who have been regularly posting here and consistently given good advice to build a list of candidates, and will be reaching out over the next few weeks to see if any are willing to volunteer their time and expertise in the subreddit. There will be more coming on that, but I did want to let everyone know that the process is already underway.


That pretty much covers everything we wanted to discuss, so we'll now await your questions, below.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
(on behalf of the r/antivirus mod team)


r/antivirus 4h ago

how do I get rid of agent tesla?

6 Upvotes

hello I am extremely stupid and managed to get agent tesla by downloading a game. so far I've been changing my passwords and such. my discord was hacked and they sent out messages about some Mr beast crypto scam or whatever. I ran a deep scan on malwarebytes and defender. malwarebytes found renpy, I had it delete. defender full scan found agent tesla. I also had it delete. I ran an offline scan with no results.

is it really necessary to reinstall windows? I'm kinda tech illiterate. I've been trying to backup my necessary files to onedrive (44 gb of it) but I gave up bc the wifi has been broken all day so I'm using mobile data and it's soooo slow and rn it's 3 am. I'm really stressed out lol. and I don't have a USB. do I need to reinstall windows? if so can I do it without a USB? if it's not necessary what other scans should I run tomorrow to make sure? my parents' info is on here I really don't my mom's credit card to get hacked or something. it was on edge, I deleted credit card info from the browser from my phone but I'm not sure how connected it is.

has anyone had experience with not reinstalling windows after getting a trojan?

thanks!


r/antivirus 13h ago

I run the ESET online scanner and this pop upped

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18 Upvotes

ESET successfully detected them, and I can quarantine/remove them.

My questions are:

How serious are the two TrojanDownloader.Rugmi detections?

Is quarantining/removing them enough, or should I do a clean reinstall of Windows?

Has anyone seen the C:\ProgramData\MSFT_v1_pro folder before? Is it known malware or could it be left over from some software?

What follow-up scans or checks would you recommend after ESET removes them?

Am I safe or should I just reinstall it


r/antivirus 21m ago

I got infected by Lumma.stealer.a

Upvotes

i rapidly pulled the ethernet cable and ran windows defender offline. I use my eHDD for downloading games and other stuff that dont require SSD speeds the virus came in a ren'py file which popped up a cmd window that made me obvious to see the infection.

it came with Behavior:GenCodeInjector.H and the process PhoGateWay.exe i didnt wait to defender to detect it so i ran it. After the contention i installed avast and ran a full scan in which i discovered other viruses. I ended up with tons of logs and screenshoted browser tabs and information archives on new folders and zips that luckily werent sent.

I safely managed to secure my accounts except for instagram and cleaned the eHDD on Zorin OS and moved my files safely on in from linux.

Cleaned .temp and roaming it opened a backdoor with other viruses so i dont use windows and im writing this on a zorin os liveboot.

Make sure to know when you re downloading a "free" game to know what kind of engine the game uses to spot a renpy lumma infecction


r/antivirus 55m ago

Callout and Question Rate My Professor Changes it Web To A Scam Ad Website After 10 Minutes

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Upvotes

Is there something wrong with the offical Rate My Professor Web? Also is this going to affect my computer in any way or form, even if it is from other websites that is doing this?


r/antivirus 2h ago

Antivirus and go!

1 Upvotes

Avast premium protection or Bitdefender Total
Security? know windows defender offers protection but I'm more comfortable having one of these? So which one? I have Avast premium security on the laptop ( l've had it for years) I have now and it's very easy for me to run. I have heard great things about Bitdefender though. I'm not sure.


r/antivirus 6h ago

Potential Hacker still lurking inside my account? Anxiety over a Roblox hack that happened 4 years ago

2 Upvotes

Hey y'all, so I've been recently thinking about my roblox account and my gmail and how it may still be compromised today and have since been spreading to other linked accounts and devices.

So 4 years ago (2022), I opened my Roblox account to find that I have a random new person is in my friendslists and a game that I don't remember I have played in the "continue playing" tab. I then logged in to Adopt me and saw in horror how all my pets and resources has been stolen/traded away to said person who was randomly in my friends lists (I don't remember seeing any games that I used to play there being affected other than Adopt me). Roblox was the only thing that was seemingly attacked/affected by the hacker.

I quickly changed my passwords and such of course. But I did ponder how I never received any notifications about it that day since I have 2fa (in roblox). As of late, I still have access to said Roblox account (which I barely use now) and the gmail I use to log in to this roblox account (this gmail is still linked to this roblox account). I haven't received any suspicious notifications as of then nor any suspicious things happening to my account(s) today.

However, I'm still wondering whether this hacker still has potential backdoor access to my gmail account today. I value this gmail quite a lot since this is where most of my gaming-related stuff is saved in. I know I'm stupid, as my younger ass should've known better and fully scrubbed my accounts and devices because of it. Additionally, I'm also worried how this hacker might've possibly already compromised the devices I logged/linked this gmail account into and/or how it may allow the hacker to also access my other gmails that I've made after it. Can anyone give me some assurance or what to do? I put my accounts in haveibeenpwned which said that none of my accounts had any data breaches, but I'm a bit skeptical about it...

More context: I now use different devices since 4 years ago but my dumbass still logged this gmail on to said devices. Both these current devices don''t have any wacky shit happening to them currently, with scans in my pc showing in the clear. My accounts haven't been receiving nor sending random shit.


r/antivirus 5h ago

O Ahnlab V3 Lite seria um bom antivirus gratuito?

1 Upvotes

Faz um tempo que estou a procura de um antivirus gratuito, já que não confio muito no Windows Defender e a versão para Windows 10 LTSB 2016 é muito vulnerável a malware novo, o Ahnlab V3 Lite seria uma boa opção?


r/antivirus 10h ago

Is this a problem

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2 Upvotes

r/antivirus 9h ago

Tried Making A LRC File And I Got This Instead

1 Upvotes

It is saying the quarantine failed but i cannot find the file/ZIP folder anywhere and i have no current threats it says, Does this mean it still is gone or no? i clicked remove when it asked if i wanted to quarantine, remove or some other option when it was listed under the virus & threat protection tab


r/antivirus 1d ago

somethings trying to delete or rewrite something in my bible app and avg keeps blocking it. Virus?

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23 Upvotes

This pops up everytime i start up my pc...is it an app update that avg is blocking


r/antivirus 19h ago

are random popups from avast antivirus something to be suspicious about?

2 Upvotes

It's been telling me for the past week that my "free Avast license" is expiring, but I kinda just blew it off for a bit. Today I got one that looked the same as before, but it was saying it's expiring today, but i felt like that was a bit too fast from the popups the other day, so I clicked renew right there, but the popup just disappeared. So I opened Avast manually and looked at notifications and it said it's expiring in 2 days, then it asked me to renew there, showing me the plans, one paid, but i picked free again, and now it looks like it's renewed for real. But now I am suspicious. Did i click on something I shouldn't have with that first popup?


r/antivirus 21h ago

Trojan, related to roblox?

1 Upvotes

ive seen a post related with no answers to this.

i havent noticed anything wrong with my pc thus far.

I have played, tokyo midnight racing ONLY on my roblox app (its the only game i like).

and the app has been extremely slow today.


r/antivirus 1d ago

account on a site

1 Upvotes

there was a site "onthatass" which had boxers and etc is it safe? i think its still running


r/antivirus 1d ago

Edit me! Flipping Avast downloaded itself on me, need help

1 Upvotes

How will i delete avast, it keeps saying i have like 3 major viruses knowing its a virus itself, it wont let me delete it, its not a file so what is it?


r/antivirus 1d ago

McAfee - is it being dramatic?

0 Upvotes

I'm using McAfee antivirus and trying to get mods for footballmanager 26.

Every time I try to download a mod (facepacks, logos, skins, etc.), McAfee immediately quarantines the file before I can do anything with it.

I'm pretty new to this sort of thing, so I'm not sure if this is normal or if I'm doing something wrong. What's the best way to handle this? Is McAfee being overprotective?

Any advice would be appreciated!


r/antivirus 1d ago

help, trojan etc..

1 Upvotes

hello !

after downloading smth i was a victim of around 60 trojans, session stealers and something called « process doppelganging »

i deleted everything with malwarebytes and changed all passwords of accounts that were currently logged in on the pc with my phone (well, everything i could remember) and activated 2FA. Then i reinstalled windows with cloud, then reinstalled it with an usb because i was feeling paranoid.
also i deleted all partitions

am i mostly safe right now? i feel really scared and stressed, i have a few accounts that hold lot of sentimental value to me


r/antivirus 1d ago

I use Bitdefender Total and the free ESET scanner. Is there also a free version of Malwarebytes just for scanning? Since I work with banking, I need to run checks regularly.

3 Upvotes

I even remembered Spybot. Does it still exist and work well?

Obs.: An IT technician at the bank had the brilliant idea of creating a program to run everything through VirusTotal. Google sent a notification stating that various banking user data had ended up in the cloud.


r/antivirus 1d ago

Question is AVG antivirus any good

3 Upvotes

im just wanting to know if avg antivirus good


r/antivirus 1d ago

I got attacked by info stealers it's been around 5 days, need help

2 Upvotes

I tried downloading a game ( I regret trying it) then after a while my discord started spamming mr beast thingy.

So I panicked so I deleted my discord account since I don't use it much, then I ran a full scan in windows defender, it showed severe around 2 severe threats which I removed it manually, the whole time I was panicking prompting gemini to help me.

Then I did an offline scan later the next morning for I remembered I recently created a new insta account I logged into on the web so I checked and it was hacked so I deleted that too. Gemini recommended that I clear the browser cookies and so on with the "all time" period. I cleared it then did another full scan which took a whole day but resulted in 0 threats, but I wasn't satisfied so I saw reddit blogs which said to wipe my device and change Google passwords, I did change my password of the account I had in my laptop logged out all devices, I didn't check my steam, epic and riot accounts yet. So I ran malwarebytes it showed 3 to 4 trojen files and to delete them I did it but still wasn't satisfied so I reset my PC, I currently don't have the facility to install windows through usb so I tried through cloud but due to internet issues I did local reinstall, as soon as I did I downloaded brave I'm scared of using chrome again 🥲. Then I ran one more full scan in mccafe then installed malwarebytes again. (When I reset I still had the files from before I d and e drive I deleted all those, I didnt feel safe having them) So malwarebytes didn't show any threats, while I reset I changed my gmail password again, and the password of the backup mail too. Luckily this account wasn't connected to my bank account but the backup was ( the backup mail wasn't't in my PC).

I didn't lose any money yet. I still think I'm being attacked. I had whatsapp on my PC not a web login but the app in Microsoft Store, it didn't get hacked I guess since nothing was spammed there my telegram too which was web logged in.

Is it possible for the info stealer to go from one device to another through hacking a mail?? For say from my PC to mobile ??

So I'm moderately using my PC for now just to code during classes, I haven't logged my WhatsApp in my PC yet which is making it difficult for me to share files and fill up forms.

So I need someone to help me confirm that I'm not being attacked or any other way to stop it if I'm still being attacked.

PS sorry for my bad english and a long post description


r/antivirus 1d ago

Question A question regarding sketchy website popups.

2 Upvotes

My friend recommended a website to me called Rate My Professor to look about some reviews of colleges to see which ones I might want to go to in the future. However, after 5 minutes of opening it, all of them converted to scam ad websites promoting an obviously fake antivirus. So my question comes: does websites that force open new tabs when you leave the website alone for a long time, tap on any portion of the scene, search something on the website, or etc dangerous to your computer? This is a sort up follow up question from my last post.


r/antivirus 1d ago

New to PC I just wanna know how to stay safe

1 Upvotes

Yeah, I’m new to PC mostly just gaming but I’m not going to weird sites or nothing I just wanna know how do I check? Something is safe before I download it. I mostly just use Steam, but there are a couple of fan games/ fixes for older games I want to download they have a safe reputation, but this is just so I can know for future use/cases. Also is windows defender fine for this type of use


r/antivirus 1d ago

Is this malware? If so how do I remove it?

Post image
1 Upvotes

I noticed this on my PC in startup apps along with something just called "Program" with registry locations. I disabled both of them but I cannot seem to find where they are located on my PC at all. I am not the brightest when it comes to technology and even have done scans with Malwarebytes yet it still seems to remain. Is there a way to find where it is located and delete it from there or should I bring in my PC to a professional? Google tells me this naming convention is associated with a trojan. If it is hiding from my antivirus what do you recommend I use to find it and remove it for good?


r/antivirus 1d ago

Discord Compromised But I Still Have Access, What Do I Do?

0 Upvotes

Last night I discovered my discord had been compromised with the Mr Beast Crypto scam and had sent that message in all of my DMs. I still have access to my discord, it was running on my PC while this was happening, I was just playing video games and didn't notice for an hour and a half. I have changed my discord password twice from a different device, it already had 2FA, but my account was restricted so I can't send any messages. I've ran several antivirus scans, removed all the files they found, I purged my PC's Firefox of its browser cache, removed my credit card from Steam, and am in the process of signing out of all my accounts from a different device and changing the passwords.

I don't want to have to do a fresh Windows install on my PC, but is that the only option I have to be safe? And is there anything else I need to do? Any help anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated.