Full Disclosure mailing list archives

Re: antivirus and spyware scanning


From: randall <lists () domain-logic com>
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 14:36:10 -0500

At 09:43 AM 6/15/2004 -0700, you wrote:
> I think it is very useful to scan a windows machine
> from viruses while having that machine booted to
> linux.  This pretty much ensures that you will find
> all the virii on that system.
Not necessarily.  You'll have to update the virus
signatures on your CD distribution prior to scanning,
and that doesn't guarantee complete coverage, either.
I like to just plug the box into my network (home or office)
and scan the entire drive from another box.

If you remove a known infected drive and actually place
it into your own machine, your system is venerable until
your Antivirus software shields are up and running.

Booting from a CD may require changing BIOS settings,
or the machine may be old enough (I still come across
companies running these) that will not boot from CD.

You can also carry along your laptop and crossover cable
to scan 'on the road' without much setup.

I think a more useful setup for me (on newer machines)
would be to create a Linux bootable USB thumbdrive that
I could boot and scan from.  Updating signatures would
be trivial.

randall

Blaming guns for crime is like blaming a pencil for misspelled words


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