SwatIt Update Available

[Ranger Bob]

A SwatIt update is available.

[mikey]

RB, are you familiar with this product? Did you know it was distributed as a pitch for his other useless sharewares? Did you know that it is not a very good AT? Did you know that it was distributed by a known con man? Many in the sec community will remember the conflicts that arose when PCHelp exposed Michael Paris and his poor rendition of a FW(Lockdown2000). SnakeOil...selling false security and other scams are the game this con man plays. Use SwatIt if you like...it's free and I don't have any knowledge of major problems with it other than it's limitations in removing trojans. So far it hasn't crippled many users sys as some of his other scams have. Just make sure you don't give out your addy...his spam is very well known.

Ref; http://www.pc-help.org/www.nwinternet.com/...Davis/Paris.htm (http://www.pc-help.org/www.nwinternet.com/pchelp/lockdown/Davis/Paris.htm)

Google; http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-...pchelp+lockdown (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=pchelp+lockdown)

[Ranger Bob]

I have used it for a couple of years and it seems to work fine. It is very slow but from what I have been told this is pretty normal. No I had not seen the link you posted. SwatIt is about the only free Anti-Trojan software you can find so if you know of a free alternative I would gladly change. It does not contain any spyware or adware and seems to work but I really don't know that for sure since I have never had a trojan on my PC. :)

[mikey]

Sorry RB, didn't mean to sound insensitive. These black sheep in the midst of our industry just set me on fire.

"...seems to work..."

I personally tested it for myself last year...not for public review but just for my own curiosity. To do a proper review of an AT, a couple dozen common targets should be used. For my own test, I only used 7. My findings were sad. If you want a sampling for your own purposes, I can hook you up privately.

[Ranger Bob]

Do you know of a good alternative? Sadly my PC got hit with lighting and the insurance copy only paid me half of what it was worth so I am going to have to come up with some bucks to really get back up to speed so I am having to watch what I spend on software.

I was not upset by your reply. I totally agree with you on this. I had never seen any negative comments on SwatIt and had no reason to think it might not be a good freeware program. It is important that people be made aware of these types of things so they can make informed decisions on whether they want to support a software author or not.

I became very unhappy with the way the software author of JV16 Power Tools handed his going to shareware and I make sure anyone that ask me about the software know how I feel. :)

[Angel]

I use Swat It as well. It found a trojan the first time I used it and it got rid of it. If you know of a better free alternative, please post it. Thanks

[LeRoi]

>> It found a trojan the first time I used it and it got rid of it.<<

Did it identify the trojan? Can you remember the name? It may very well have been a false positive, Swat-it is famous for them.

I know of no free anti-trojan programs that are worth much of anything. I would advise you to run online virus (with your own antivirus disabled) and trojan scans to check for the presence of trojans rather than use Swat-it. Most good antivirus programs are competent enough to handle most trojans (except AVG), however none approaches the effectiveness of BOClean or the ease of use (imo), it is not a scanner, detects trojans in a totally different way. It detects them when they unpack themselves or attempt to "phone home", which is what trojans do.

Trojans will send personal and private data back to their creator, who wants your credit card number and other valuable information, could be much more costly than any true virus.

[johng]

I agree with LeRoi it probably was a false positive and scanners are famous for finding them, leaving you in a quandry!
The other problem with SwatIt is the very slow process, in fact so slow its just not viable.Go for BoClean which does appear to be trouble free and with very regular top ups.
Saying that I don't think I have had a virus or trojan in the last 4 1/2 years since getting this computer and I do spend a lot of time on the internet downloading.
John

[LeRoi]

I've only had one "trojan" detected and no viruses and I am not sure that what I had detected was a true trojan.

Norton identified and quarantined it as soon as my browser cached it, no real indentification was made, no name associated with it, just random characters. Apparently if it was a true trojan, Norton caught it as soon as it was cached and before it could unpack and phone home, that would explain why BOClean didn't spring into action, whatever the reason I am glad Norton caught it. It may very well have been a malicious script rather than a trojan, another explanation why BOClean didn't worry about it. Norton has jumped on the bandwagon of misidentification of malicious scripts as viruses/trojans, similar to other antivirus makers, but not quite as flagrantly. Panda and a few others identify spyware/malware as viruses, which they are not.

It did corrupt my Mozilla profile (either it or Norton from the quarantine process) and I had to create a new one, no big deal at all, very easy to recover from.