r/antivirus • u/goretsky • Feb 22 '24
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 • u/goretsky • Jun 04 '25
[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:
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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 • u/ihave389iq • 4h ago
I did a FRST scan and at the bottom of the FRST[.]txt file, I found these under the "Files in the root of some directories" subsection
r/antivirus • u/aniol • 10h ago
Microsoft's newest software release for Linux is... Microsoft Defender for the Linux desktop. Microsoft Defender has been ported to Linux to "secure Linux desktops" with Microsoft acknowledging that "more developers begin to use Linux desktops" and thus bringing their security application and threat-protection product to Linux desktops to complement their prior ill-used Linux server support.
r/antivirus • u/Beginning-Average416 • 12h ago
What is your opinion of ESET anti-virus? I am looking for alternatives to McAfee.
r/antivirus • u/Skykid49080 • 7h ago
This morning, I got on my PC to update a game, when I logged in, I got a Steam notification about a error and that it needed something updated, me, still waking up, accepted, it was after a few minutes I realized something might have been wrong, did some looking around on some subreddits and others don't trust it while some say it's safe, did I accidentally install something awful or is there no need to worry?
r/antivirus • u/Born_Independent7662 • 9h ago
Hello, can somebody help me find this file? I don't know if it's a virus or not.
Thank you very much.
r/antivirus • u/No-Yesterday-9808 • 3h ago
Hi guys. I have an iPhone 15. This morning, I got an email from some company I never signed up for asking for me to follow a link they sent. I had just woken up and I was really tired. I knew that it was fake, and I was reading the email fully (my first mistake) when I accidentally clicked on the link.
Since I‘m kind of a dinosaur when it comes to devices I got scared. It didn’t even load in before I closed the link and started googling stuff lol.. I checked my downloads and nothing was there, but just in case, can anybody give me some advice or help, or just let me know if I’ll be okay? Again, I’m not really good with technology so I thought here would be the best to ask I’m sorry if it’s not
r/antivirus • u/GwGStark • 4h ago
Bruh I know this sub is for windows but please help me out
What does this even mean?? everytime i run this they show same 2 risky apps removed and just increases the no. Of times by thousands.. please help
r/antivirus • u/AbsoluteIdiocracy • 7h ago
Please help due to my stupidity of not checking the unknown website of the game im downloading my messenger account started sending the mrbeast scam photos to all of my groupchats and chats, now i have disconnected my laptop and logged my messenger and other socials and my chrome out of that laptop but i doubt it did anything and i have deleted the application, the virus is probably still there, How do i get rid of it and also due to my unpreparedness i cant change my messenger's password due to it having the wrong number for confirmation that its me. Can my other devices be infected aswell? What to do please.
r/antivirus • u/joshmoefoe2 • 6h ago
Hello everybody, I'd like to play this game that has been shut down but now has community hosted servers. I ran the launcher through VirusTotal and it came up with a 4/69 score.
I've downloaded things like before that may have positives because it has to inject things into the game or whatever however what's sounding my alarm is that you need a steam login which they say is for the in game name but is suspicious nonetheless and that everything in the game is free. If everything is free, who's covering server costs?
r/antivirus • u/SuccessfulTip4300 • 13h ago
Instalei 2 vírus contra 4 antivírus vírus pvp lendario. Instalei um fake executor do delta para roblox e um fake de wave quero ver como o pc reage a tal virus
r/antivirus • u/RunnaManDan • 17h ago
I went into a website from a google search (2nd option website is called roucet.-c-o-m). As soon as I got into the site, i realized I fucked up and clicked out. Now these popups (attached) keep popping up from my windows notification center.
Any advice much appreciated
r/antivirus • u/aboaias • 10h ago
r/antivirus • u/missa1lsunday • 14h ago
so i want to COMPLETLY get rid of kaspersky plus, my subscription gonna end soon, and i want to get rid of the acc and any files, also i saw somewhere it still runs in the browser, i use chrome, i would appreciate any help
r/antivirus • u/kcbsforvt • 22h ago
The results matter to home users comparing security software, but they cover malicious-file protection and false alarms rather than every feature in each product.
https://av-comparatives.org/consumer-malware-protection-test-september-2026/
Bitdefender, ESET, G Data, Kaspersky, Total Defense and VIPRE earned the top rating. AV-Comparatives said these products combined strong protection with low false-positive rates, meaning they were less likely to incorrectly flag legitimate files as malicious.
The lab evaluated 20 consumer anti-malware products using about 10,000 malware samples. It looked beyond basic detection to whether products could prevent malware from compromising a system, while also measuring false positives that may interrupt users.
The tested field included free products such as Avast One Free Antivirus and AVG Antivirus Free, as well as Microsoft Defender Antivirus and paid security suites from several vendors.
A top award is a useful comparison point, not a reason to switch immediately. Check the full report for detailed results, then weigh protection, false alarms, price, device support and whether your current product remains updated.
AV-Comparatives says the complete public report is available free of charge without registration.
r/antivirus • u/OriOiO_i • 17h ago
Hello, I downloaded a graphic novel file that was tagged with a false file extension .cbz.exe extracted from a .cbz.7z using Winrar. And I ended up running the false exe file multiple times by double clicking (im pretty certain). My laptop is potentially infected in what I can only assume is an infostealer since running the file didnt result in anything so far.
This chain of events occurred around 5pm~7pm (gmt +8) on 15 Oct.
For what I did for remediation, I performed an offline scan with MS Defender, then downloaded MalwareBytes for a separate scan which flagged four files that were false positives (image in comments). I did end up deleting a few local temp files around the inception of this fiasco, but I restored them for the scan assuming it might help in any way.
**Keywords**
fabled-lily (Frst.txt)
stoic-scout (Addition.txt)
hashed-boss (Security.txt)
[Original download link (top green button is fake which is what I mistakenly downloaded from)]
https://uploadrar(dot)com/o5j2120wp8ef
r/antivirus • u/Xester77 • 12h ago
Hey everyone, I need some advice because I'm honestly pretty stressed about this.
I was browsing moviesmod.com when a fake Cloudflare/human verification popped up. It instructed me to press Win + R, paste something using Ctrl + V, and hit Enter. Unfortunately, I followed the instructions without thinking.
Nothing obvious happened immediately, but I got worried and started checking Windows Security.
Here's what happened afterward:
A Quick scan initially showed no threats.
I tried running Microsoft Defender Offline, but my laptop's battery died during the process. After rebooting, I got a BitLocker recovery screen, entered the recovery key, and Windows booted normally.
Later, Windows Defender detected TrojanDropper:PowerShell/Cobacis.B, marked as Severe, with its status showing Quarantined.
A subsequent scan detected PUABundler:Win32/MediaGet, marked as Low and initially showing Active in my Chrome cache. I removed the unwanted item through Windows Security.
I've also enabled potentially unwanted app blocking and run a scan afterward.
I haven't logged into any accounts or entered any passwords since following the fake verification.
My questions are:
Does the quarantined Trojan mean that specific file is contained, or could it have executed other things beforehand?
If the scan has finished and I've removed the unwanted item, is that generally enough, or should I do anything else?
Is there any reason to suspect my personal files or accounts are compromised?
Do I need to complete another Defender Offline scan, or is that unnecessary if everything looks okay?
I'm using Windows 11 with Microsoft Defender. I'm hoping to avoid reinstalling Windows or factory-resetting my laptop unless there's a genuine reason to.
I'd appreciate practical advice from anyone who's dealt with this. Please be honest, but I'd also like to avoid unnecessary panic.
r/antivirus • u/SlightWarrior66 • 13h ago
So a couple weeks ago, I downloaded a game, I shouldn't have (I believe it was the renPy infostealer), I was told I had sent people the Mr Beast crypto thing on discord, so I changed my password on a clean device, nuked my pc, changed passwords on everything, enable 2fa on everything, etc. Even after doing all this, I'm getting calls, saying they want to do a fraud check (this was obviously not from my bank so I didn't answer back). I had a text message as well, telling me my last few purchases, including a steam transaction I didn't make. So I checked my actual bank account, froze my card, and the steam transaction wasn't there. I'm just wondering if this is still the renPy attack, and how can I stop all this from continuing to happen. And yes, I've learnt my lesson about downloading games online.
r/antivirus • u/dieyouwill • 21h ago
Hi everyone. I fell victim to the teams interview link scam- in the process chrome ended up downloading a zip file which you can see in the attached screenshot. Defender did instantly quarantine it and remove it before I was ever able to click on it or do anything (I did not extract the file). Defender also grabbed a msteams file from the google cache but from my research it is just a webpage asset and shouldnt be harmful. I have ran many scans using Defender and Malwarebytes since with totally clean results each time. Offline scans and deep root scans come back clean as well.
In this case, do I really need to reinstall windows? I keep getting conflicting info in my own research.
r/antivirus • u/BorderAlternative791 • 14h ago
This was on my old Windows installation. I've since reset the PC using Windows Reset and chose the Cloud Download option, so Windows was reinstalled from a fresh download.
Since then I've:
- Changed all my important passwords
- Added 2FA wherever possible
- Signed out/revoked sessions where I could
- Created a new email address and started moving my important accounts over to it
- I haven't signed into that new email on the pc
How do I know if I'm safe now? Is there anything else I should do or check to make sure the malware is gone and my accounts are secure?
r/antivirus • u/cronyu4 • 15h ago
So on my computer(not this one) i downloaded bad time trio and closed it again cause it was the wrong version but after closing it i saw a few screenshots in the comments that said it was a trojan and a keylogger which i didn read cause im dumb
So i deleted it right after opening it , am i fried
Links for the download site and totalvirus :
hxxps://gamejolt(dot)com/games/BTTN/979674
This was the site i got the game version on it cause its the official game jolt site i wouldnt have to worry and in turn didn read the comments 😢
r/antivirus • u/Cautious_Injury_6169 • 16h ago
I went to this email noreply[@]nedm[.]asus[.]com, clicked on this link: https[:]//omicard[.]asus[.]com/HL/3fe5324/510f0143/0/0.249731a/16eb7a9/16ec8c2/d/1170/800/64[.]htm, and then signed up with my Google account. I later then contacted Asus customer services and they say that the email is not theirs
The problem is that when I scan the link in virustotal, they said that there is nothing wrong with it. It just sends me to the official website. https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/bf76d01e4af939e1dea7b5fc7ccb7b24fcc22e4a23d83f49fc5b847b5a0efafb/gti-summary
It's been like five days, I tried to change all my passwords but some were personal info for others so I couldn't.
How do I know what does this link do? How severe is this?
What should I do?
r/antivirus • u/NeoPootter • 20h ago
the other 2 above have the exact same affected items but the status said it already removed.
my friend also got this at the exact same date and time
r/antivirus • u/Strict_Card819 • 16h ago
Hello! When I first encountered with this extension it was automatically blocked due to malware, policy changes, or blah blah blah. I HATE malware or anything malicious on my pc due to expensive accounts on steam and battlenet which all has cookies onto the edge browser.
I panicked, I removed the browser then made a page a week ago regarding it. (Another subreddit) and was told to reset my pc then install malwarebytes and adware (also malwarebytes) and it shows zero. Which I followed, then I installed Ublock Origin Lite (OFFICIAL DEV and original from the Ublock Origin from chrome) and the Jedge extension is back again. I panicked again and uninstalled it, made brave as my default browser. Changed all my passwords AGAIN and I didn’t touch edge since.
I did a windows defender FULL scan and zero threats, then I deleted the Microsoft extension filed and empty my recycle bin. I was told to do something in registry but I didn’t know how to do that.
What I am asking is this, what is making this Jedge extension come through Microsoft edge? I have nothing malicious nor do I click on links. I have Steam, Battlenet, Roblox, Epic Games. No random zip files or exes other than those.
