Nowadays, keeping your computer clean and secure is not a very easy thing to do. Threats may come in all shapes and sizes; so, if you don’t have the necessary programs and knowledge, you might find yourself in a very dangerous situation. The following article is a small tutorial of the basic measures you should take to make sure you and your computer are safe from today’s most often encountered Internet threats. And as I have already written in my previous articles on Softpedia, you won’t need to buy anything, it’s all about freeware software and advice.

First of all, you’ll have to install a reliable antivirus program, of course. We recommend Avira AntiVir Personal, but you can also give Avast! Home Edition, BitDefender Free Edition, Gucup Antivirus, ClamWin or a-squared Free a try. An alternative to this first step is using virus cleaners like McAfee AVERT Stinger, Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool, Kaspersky Free Cleaner, Avira AntiVir Removal Tool, avast! Virus Cleaner or Multi Virus Cleaner, but all these applications are designed to remove only a small percentage of viruses, compared to what an antivirus software will delete and, furthermore, most of them are not updated as often as an antivirus is. Besides these two, antivirus programs have one more, very important advantage: if you use them to scan an infected application before installing it on your computer, not only will they detect viruses, but other types of malicious software like spyware, rootkits or suspicious toolbars.

And since I’ve mentioned spyware, we’ll take a look at another way to remove this harmful type of software from your computer. But before we get into that, for those of you who don’t know what spyware is or what it may do to your computer, here’s a little insight: spyware is a privacy-invasive software that intercepts the way your computer and computer applications are configured without your consent, but it can also collect private information about your Internet surfing habits (the websites you visit or enter most often) and send it to a third-party, again, without your consent. If spyware is already installed on your computer, the safest way to remove it is by installing an antispyware program. Here are your freeware alternatives: Ad-Aware, Spyware Terminator, SpyBot – Search & Destroy, Microsoft Windows Defender, SUPERAntiSpyware. The most important thing you must remember about antispyware and especially antivirus programs is: be sure to keep them up-to-date. Performing an update at least once a day is a must.

Another important computer threat, besides viruses and spyware, are rootkits. The general problem with rootkits is that, as opposed to viruses and spyware, they are not so easy to detect or evade. Therefore, in case your security programs do not offer a very reliable protection against them, it’s better to run a scan using an application created solely to find and remove rootkits. First of all, let’s start with a short definition, which will help you understand why you should take this type of threat very seriously: Rootkits are created to take fundamental control of a PC, once again, without your consent. Allowing Administrator access to your computer is even worse if you realize that, in most cases, rootkits use this type of access to conceal malicious activities performed by trojans, backdoors, sniffers, keyloggers or spam distributers, that will not only put your computer in grave danger, but may affect the security of other people’s computers with which you interact. So, here are a few programs to help you detect any rootkits that may be found on your computer: AVG Anti-Rootkit, RootkitRevealer, F-Secure BlackLight Rootkit Detection, Panda Anti-Rootkit, Trend Micro RootkitBuster, McAfee Rootkit Detective, Sophos Anti-Rootkit, Rootkit Unhooker, RootKit Hook Analyzer, BitDefender RootkitUncover and DarkSpy Anti-Rootkit.

These are the programs you should use to detect and remove any malicious software from your computer. In the second part of our tutorial, we’ll take a look at some of the ways to prevent the installation of malware components on any PC, no matter if it’s yours, whether it has a security program installed or not.

By Stefan Fintea, Software News Editor
Link Information

Malware Signatures
================
620 Items

MD5 Checksum (GAV.exe)
–> 355BE5862D8320BDCFBA38E66649EAF
MD5 Checksum (GAV-DB.gdb)
–> 4B7AE7D7176774B7F2B47C5F5ACD08F

Requirement
===========
.Net FrameWork Installation on your computer (Required)
Minimum : .NET Framework 1.1
Recomended : .NET Framework 3.0 /.NET Framework 3.5

Website
=======
~ On Softpedia
~ On University of Atmajaya Yogyakarta
~ On File Cluster

Upload/Submit malware sample
===========================
Please upload or submit suspect malware in :
~ Here

Contact, Support
===============
For Information and support, please contact me at

email : gucup.antivirus@gmail.com

phone : +628122796364
ym : yusuf.patiku

Donation
========
Opened for who just that wants to give donation
for GAV’S development need that always
consistent

Account information

Bank Name : Lippo
Account number : 787-17-02585-1
Account Name : Yusuf Theretsa Patiku
Branch : Yogyakarta
State : Indonesia

Please attaches subject “GAV’S donation” on part
that dispatch information its following can be known
and in the end for donations will at publish
on website.

Thank you.

Download Location
================
Gucup Antivirus 3.2.8 (Downloaded => 413 times)

Award / Sertificate
================
- Look in Softpedia

- Look in File Cluster

Malware Signatures
================
612 Items

MD5 Checksum (GAV.exe)
–> 355BE5862D8320BDCFBA38E66649EAF
MD5 Checksum (GAV-DB.gdb)
–> 4B7AE7D7176774B7F2B47C5F5ACD08F

Requirement
===========
.Net FrameWork Installation on your computer (Required)
Minimum : .NET Framework 1.1
Recomended : .NET Framework 3.0 /.NET Framework 3.5

Website
=======
~ On Softpedia
~ On University of Atmajaya Yogyakarta
~ On File Cluster

Upload/Submit malware sample
===========================
Please upload or submit suspect malware in :
~ Here

Contact, Support
===============
For Information and support, please contact me at

email : gucup.antivirus@gmail.com

phone : +628122796364
ym : yusuf.patiku

Donation
========
Opened for who just that wants to give donation
for GAV’S development need that always
consistent

Account information

Bank Name : Lippo
Account number : 787-17-02585-1
Account Name : Yusuf Theretsa Patiku
Branch : Yogyakarta
State : Indonesia

Please attaches subject “GAV’S donation” on part
that dispatch information its following can be known
and in the end for donations will at publish
on website.

Thank you.

Download Location
================
Gucup Antivirus 3.2.7 (Downloaded => 310 times)

Award / Sertificate
================
- Look in Softpedia

- Look in File Cluster

Dear All,

Beberapa waktu yang lalu situs upload sample malware yang saya kelola sudah tidak dapat dibuka, akan tetapi saya telah membuat kembali untuk situs upload sample malware yang kali ini memang sengaja file hasil upload tidak ditampilkan dengan tujuan
menghindari banyaknya masuk file-file yang aneh yang dikirimkan oleh user.

Saya pribadi sangat mengharapkan agar dalam pengiriman sample baik ke situs maupun
dalam attachment email agar di compress terlebih dahulu dan diberi password untuk
menghindari pemblokiran oleh antivirus pada saat file tersebut hendak di download.

Demikian, harap maklum.

Best Regards,

Yusuf Theretsa Patiku.

Dear all,

Sehubungan dengan banyaknya kerjaan yang harus saya selesaikan beberapa bulan ini,
maka melalui situs ini saya meminta maaf yang sebesar-besarnya kepada user GAV karena belum sempat untuk meng-update kembali database signatures nya. Banyak
sekali memang yang masuk sample malware ke saya. Oleh karena itu saya akan mengusahakan agar minggu depan tepatnya tanggal 20 Oktober 2008 Gucup Antivirus
3.2.7 sudah bisa saya publish kembali.

Best Regards,

Yusuf Theretsa Patiku.