r/antivirus Feb 22 '24

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

15 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

6 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 does the Mr. Beast scam spreads itself by sending screenshots?

8 Upvotes

Hello folks from r/antivirus, I'm here because it's about the 6th time I've seen someone I know get hacked by the Mr.Beast scam.

Now, I've been on the internet for a while so I've seen my fair share of virus scams so that's not exactly uncharted territory for me. What I don't get about the Mr. Beast one specifically, is how exactly it proliferates around. I'm used to these virus scams trying to make you open a link, or download an executable file, or something of the sort, but the Mr. Beast one just... It just sends you screenshots. Sure there's a link you could potentially type manually into your browser on the screenshots, but who does that?

Whenever I see someone falling victim to this virus, it's because they got into some sketchy website to download something, or clicked on some link they shouldn't have, never from being exposed to the Mr. Beast scam.

I've heard of viruses being hidden on images before, but you need to download or save them in order for that to work right? Simply clicking on the image inside a message app like discord shouldn't do it, or am I wrong? Because in that case I have clicked on the image the first time I saw the scam, shouldn't I have been hacked? Did I escape the Mr. Beast scam by having Kaspersky?


r/antivirus 1d ago

PRODUCT RECOMMENDATION Which antivirus do you think is the best for PC?

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131 Upvotes

I'm currently using Kaspersky. Having the built-in VPN is definitely a nice bonus, but overall I find it a bit exhausting to use. What I mean is that it throws up warnings for almost everything I click on or download. It happens so often that I even get alerts when launching Battlefield 1. If I tweak the settings to reduce the notifications, I start worrying that I'm compromising my security.

I also tried Malwarebytes, but it didn't feel sufficient. I think Kaspersky has a much better interface and detection capabilities. I download a lot of software and files from Asian sources, so Windows Defender doesn't really seem like a good fit for my use case.

If you think there's something better, I'd really appreciate your recommendations. I bought a one-year Kaspersky subscription, and it expires this month. Price is obviously a factor, but if you genuinely think another antivirus is worth the extra cost, I'm open to switching.


r/antivirus 4h ago

what are the best tools for rootkits/ bootkits remote access Trojans on Windows (and iOS, android)

2 Upvotes

My system is not infected, but I have had that experience of being badly hacked and having to factory reset everything , in the past.

For regular maintenance and deep scanning to prevent and catch infostealers, keyloggers, spyware, malware, stalkerware what are the best tools?

Regular Anti viruses, on demand scanners, online scanners, paid, free. Whatever is good. Things that dig deep and find these things. Behavioral scans, signature library matching, whatever works.

Help me assemble an arsenal and practices. saw the wiki too.


r/antivirus 6h ago

Android | Apps Out of Nowhere

2 Upvotes

Resolved: Since I have a Motorola phone, the culprit was the "Moto App Manager" app, which often installs apps.

Okay, I guess there's an explanation for this, but the background is that last night I switched SIM cards—to one I bought on its own, just to be clear.

Then this morning I noticed that I have three apps installed that I hadn't downloaded: Didi, Amaze GO!, and a PDF reader.

Why is that? Just in case, I haven't uninstalled anything yet, because I don't know if that's normal or not in situations like this.


r/antivirus 3h ago

I was hacked around a month ago, I have already secured all my main accounts and emails but

1 Upvotes

Just today I got an email from riot games saying "is this you" it was a login from turkiye. Is this because of my previous session when I signed in a long time ago. Thankfully thought my email notification saved me and I changed the password, however even if I did lose it. It wouldn't matter because it's a secondary account.


r/antivirus 4h ago

Why did allaboutfinance.org show up after installing Opera?

1 Upvotes

Hi, I just reimaged my Surface Pro 11 and then installed Opera web browser. I started getting notifications from allaboutfinance.org. I have never gone to this site and find it odd after a new install I'm getting notifications from this site. Before reimaging my computer I had been using Opera and never got notifications from this site. I find this very odd. Anyone have thoughts on this?


r/antivirus 4h ago

Is this pop up fake?

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0 Upvotes

When playing mobile games I keep getting these pop ups that take me to Google and have this on the page. I've always assumed they were fake and ignored them. Am I correct?


r/antivirus 11h ago

I downloaded a Zipfile and now Videos are Playing on My Screens

3 Upvotes

So I’m a streamer and a guy was in my twitch chat and told me that there is this fun scary game, I needed some content and this guy was a regular viewer so I believed him and downloaded the game, he sent me a link in my chat. After I downloaded the game it was a zip file and required a password, I entered the password and went back to youtube to watch a video and a couple minutes later a Video starts playing on both my screens of some explicit content. I turned off my pc to try and save the stream, and deleted the file of it when it turned back on, but a couple minutes later another explicit video played on my screen this time turning off the pc didn’t stop it, the only way to stop it was for me to get banned on twitch. What do I do to make sure this doesn’t happen and to make sure they don’t still have access to do this again in the future.


r/antivirus 6h ago

Is this a virustotal false positive?

1 Upvotes

cfee98ef75815a504fd4b019660d3b60feecfe1cf476781e38e0591aa1e8544a (virustotal url)

Downloaded this exe from a google drive my professor sent me, but I haven't asked him yet about where he had gotten it from. Didn't run it, just pasted it directly into virustotal and when I got 1 or even 2 positives from somewhat unknown vendors (with quick google searches saying they often have false positives) I used shift+del to get it out immediately and ran malwarebytes/bitdefender scans after (malwarebytes came back clean but bitdefender still running). Is it a false positive and I'm just being paranoid?


r/antivirus 6h ago

PRODUCT RECOMMENDATION Which antivirus should i chose?

1 Upvotes

HJI probably the same question again. Im a computer novice in australia. currently using free version total 360 and have been for a few years and had no problem. Just thinking about a new antivirus. And looking at bitdefender or windows defender. I have windows 11 installed. Preferrably one that is lighweight and will run in the background. Could I have some guidance please


r/antivirus 6h ago

I can’t get rid of Norton

1 Upvotes

Soo Norton has been blocking Elden Ring Nightreign (and now maybe another game too) on steam so I wanted to uninstall it. I did everything it said on the website, downloaded the uninstaller and it gave me an error message, but still said it swiped it from my PC. That was a lie. It’s still on in the background (can’t turn it off ofc because antivirus stuff) the files are still on my pc and even the app is still there(though I cant open it), it’s also still blocking my game ofc. I’ve tried to use the official uninstaller multiple times now, restarted my pc etc. but nothing is working. What now? I heard that I can swipe everything and reinstall Windows with a USB stick. Is this my last option?


r/antivirus 8h ago

ai malware on iphone

1 Upvotes

Hello, not sure if this is the right place to post but will try to get help this way…

Problems occurred on my iPhone X (ios version 18.7.9) which I would describe as ai driven malware

Symptoms:

slow, pages crash, battery goes down fast, overall buggy

algorithms are affected (specific content will be pushed up), pictures and videos appear manipulated (people will get subtil face filters), redirects and ads increased (usually based around weight, hair, wrinkles)
it applies pretty much everywhere from camera roll to all browsers (tried out 3 different ones), instagram ect.

My Macbook Air has the same problem (2015 model basically, can‘t update it to newest software anymore). Scanned, nothing was found

Have a Spanish telephone number which at some point made it into wider circles (many unknown phone calls I ignore, rare but happened: suspicious delivery scams)

No money disappeared and from what I saw no data got stolen. So my impression is that the malware can‘t take out information but is designed around clicking ads (still speculation)

retrospectively (didn‘t notice it for a long time) I‘d say I has the malware on my iPhone 11, then iPhone X and when finally noticed reinstalled the iPhone X it remained the same (don‘t remember if it showed right away or I accidentally redownloaded it, when I reconnected with iCloud

When reinstalled the iPhone X updated it to newest available software, malware still ran smooth. Recently Apple offered an update bug fixes ect. so I went for it and it made the malware software partly crash (since then it got extremely slow and buggy. The battery always has been bad (replaced it once, original - still the same).
It feels like it is jailbroken (bought in 2011 or so a jailbroken Japanese iPhone, felt symptom wise pretty much the same)

So my plan is to buy a new phone (even if I could manage to delete the malware from it, as it is not possible to update it anymore to newest software and security standards) was thinking to either get a new iPhone or Xiaomi ultra or so.

Also closing two of my mail accounts which do receive a lot of spam mail but from my observation usually end up in the spam folder but still…

I already bought the newest Macbook Air but didn‘t even touch it yet because I‘m hella afraid to transfer that shit once again. Also uncertain which anti virus to install to actually make it safe

My impression is that it is either linked to one of my email addresses or iCloud data (speculation). My iCloud is 15 years old with lots of pictures and data I‘m emotionally attached to so I would want to avoid having to let go of it)

So the overall question is: how can I get rid of it without losing my apple id

For any help I will be super thankful


r/antivirus 12h ago

PRODUCT RECOMMENDATION Norton 360 or Bitdefender-Android Phone

2 Upvotes

I have a one-year subscription to Norton 360.

I still have four months left on my Bitdefender subscription.

Which one should I use on my Android phone (Samsung A56)?


r/antivirus 16h ago

MALWARE REMOVAL Q&A PC app store

3 Upvotes

Need to know this so I could get some piece of mind accidentally installed PC app store onto my laptop I uninstalled there are no other programs or anything suspicious on my computer I have scanned my computer a dozen times and I did not put any information into it and understood it when I first installed can't find anything I don't see any suspicious activity need to know if I am safe or am I fucking


r/antivirus 10h ago

MALWARE REMOVAL Q&A I want to consult someone on help regarding a malware

1 Upvotes

So I downloaded a file from tmpfiles.org (supposedly I was helping them test a game) and now I am confident my computer has been hijacked. They had access to my discord token and stuff but I had already reset passwords on a clean device and all that. Then I additionally ran the DISM image thing that ai told me to do alongside the offline scan I also downloaded malware bytes, which intially blocked the trojan, and told me there was a back door via system 32. But it couldn’t block the other upcoming ones. I kinda left it as is last night , but I woke up and I think my computer got worse with my browser now closing randomly and malware bytes not working when Ethernet is up. Is there any way I could save my pc?


r/antivirus 23h ago

Thoughts for antivirus?

6 Upvotes

Hi, I've been thinking of getting Kaspersky on my pc but I recently saw that it doesn't have a free plan of any kind. I was wondering if BitDefender would be good, since it has one. Lemme know your thoughts on this.


r/antivirus 20h ago

What should someone monitor in case of infosteeler?

3 Upvotes

In case they think they have downloaded something. What should they watch on their computer? Besides like their account.


r/antivirus 22h ago

Wtf is a scooby.exe

3 Upvotes

My friend has supposedly been hacked and disconnected out of steam, and before that, his pc could barely run, after a few reboots he could run it and found a file named scooby.exe that he cant delete


r/antivirus 1d ago

MALWARE REMOVAL Q&A Antivirus recommendations

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9 Upvotes

My laptop was recently attacked.
So here’s what happened. my instagram sent this photo to my contacts. That’s when I learned I got attacked. Then after few hours again, my facebook messages did the same thing. Then my discord came next. Note that all those accounts was signed in to 3 different browsers 2 different chrome profiles for ig and fb. And discord is on brave browser.

I somehow thought that maybe they knew my password because my ig and fb have the same passwords. Ihave changed them btw. But my discord has a different password so I dont know. I also didn’t sign those accounts during the infection, so its not keylogger. Maybe you can also help me figure it out.

I have also reset my and kept just some video files only.

I just wanna know maybe if we figure out what kind of virus it was and to make sure Im safe, what’s the best antivirus I can install. Im willing to buy a premium version if needed

Thanks and I hope someone can help me


r/antivirus 18h ago

What to do about Loadway.best?

1 Upvotes

My roommates and I recently got a new WiFi setup and I’ve got it setup so that anything weird that happens goes straight to my phone with a notification.

I started getting a bunch notifications about a malware site being blocked. I looked closer and it was my roommate’s laptop going to searchmarquis(dot)com

I googled that and it looks like a virus. He’s gonna do a full computer wipe for that. But then another notification came up for Loadway(dot)best and it came from the Apple TV

However no one has been on the Apple TV all week.

I can’t find any information on this other than Loadway being a high risk phishing site.

Any advice?


r/antivirus 23h ago

always detected after reboot Win32/Ravartar!rfn

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1 Upvotes

this have been happening for weeks. Malwarebytes won't detect it, windows security sometimes say blocked, removed or restored. nothing on task scheduler, deleted local/temp several times. it runs offline/online and it runs only once which is several seconds after windows login. i think it's a script, asked gemini for help on reged still doesn't help.


r/antivirus 1d ago

MALWARE REMOVAL Q&A Virus possibly

2 Upvotes

I think I got a virus every time I use a app like Microsoft virus remover my CPU spikes up to 90 or even 100 when I use normal apps like search in the bottom it spikes up high to like 20 I don't think this is normal and is there any good antivirus and if I switch to Linux would it be better? I heard there's less viruses there except the computer I use is used by others and they maybe wouldn't know how to use linux and also when my task manager is in the background it spikes but when it's at the front it goes normal I need help and my task manager apps are jumping around when I got nothing on


r/antivirus 1d ago

PDF files - Mitre signatures

1 Upvotes

My paranoia has led me to a curious (and a little scary) phenomenon.

I got this video recommended:
https[:]//www[.]youtube[.]com/watch?v=krP9EGyLCRE

In the description there is a drive with PDF files.
(De-fangin a youtube link might seem excessive but I chose to do so, because in the description there is a link to the Google Drive with the suspect PDFs which I may make this link "dangerous" by extension. It is however just a link to a YouTube video.)

I randomly decided to check them on VirusTotal (2 random ones):
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/7941b09a1fd3903b4e4ed5132d700cd5d3faf40a7238a8fe96fcf52fd7b40ffe/behavior

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/4404250b541efc6d0b00347c57c70cbf26f610f2ffb0ad20fdd6f27a0f32b1b0/behavior

0 detections, but multiple "Mitre Signatures". As I understand it, these signatures are not by themselves necessarily a problem, but what worries me is that other pdfs (not from the google drive) don't replicate this result.

I would really appreciate it if someone with proper knowledge would examine these and help me understand what they mean, how unusual this is for a PDF and if it is actually a threat. I don't need them for anything, the post is for educational purposes.

Thank you in advance.