Windows 8: Malware-free?
We always loved Microsoft’s operating systems as most of them are adopted very well in the whole world and security has been improving since years. The new incarnation of Windows 8 is somewhat different to the former ones as the interface underwent some notably big changes.
Windows 8 offers the same interface on many devices: Xbox, via desktop to tablet PCs and smart phones. Microsoft tries to make a user experience that is almost universal. Nevertheless, it appears that the app functionalities under Windows RT (the one for ARM tablets) and the program of the desktop version are not always the same.
You might think that having a very similar interface on the different devices enables you to do the same things on different hardware, but that doesn’t seem to be true in all the cases. Sometimes, the decision to change the user experience and the usability is a matter of security, and that is to be welcomed, but all in all, it creates confusion for the user.
A good example is Skype, from Microsoft. You can use it on any Windows device, but it is impossible to send over files under Windows RT – most possibly because of the security restrictions, due to the sandboxing approach. That is an ambiguous feature, from a user’s point of view. And that’s not the only critical view we have.
The good and the bad about AV multi scanner services
Online AV multi scanners are used quite often these days. However, not every user is aware of these sites and what their possibilities and limits are. Using the public online multi scanner services can be useful, but the analysis results don’t allow straightforward conclusions.
It is common for malware samples to remain undetectable for hours or even days. G Data has got comprehensive and fast detection rates for malware through our cloud technology. But still, some users might want to know more about a particular suspicious file or even analyze it themselves.
One of the easiest ways to accumulate a minimum of the desired information is provided by using online AV multi scanners. There is an interesting concept behind that: when you found a suspicious file on your pc, you can easily upload it to the service and have an immediate result as the file itself will be scanned with various up to date virus scan engines. This principle has been around for years now and gives you some immediate insight into a suspicious file. And there are indeed several of these scan service sites around. The most popular possibly is VirusTotal but you have several other ones like Jotti, NoVirusThanks, Metascan or Virscan, to name only some of them.
How does it work?
Let’s have a look at one of the most popular services, VirusTotal. You can submit your sample on a website but you could also use an email submission feature – whatever suits your needs. Online, you can even use some hash value searching, meaning that you can search their existing database of scanned files based on a sha1, sha256 or md5 hash. This feature is handy if you don’t have an actual file but know the hash value of it.
