Then god knows what you've got on your system.   

A HJT log from your system would make an interesting read lol

Mate, you can pick up a virus... or malware/spyware etc, from anywhere, you don't need to go to warez or porn sites, I got a hideous hijacker the other week just from Googling pics.. so if you haven't done a REAL scan with any of the heavy duty anti-malware progs out there.. then your system is probably crawling with trojans, key loggers & who knows what else

It doesn't matter how 'safe' you think you are, you really aren't.

Just because your machine appears to be running smoothly, doesn't mean it's virus/malware free

Seriously.

Does no one remember the .mdf hole from a couple years back?

I'd post a HJT log, but my computer is three thousand miles away, and will stay that way for another two weeks.  It's been about two years since I found anything more than a tracking cookie.

Besides, the last one was fun, it gave me two whole days of entertainment.  The removal tools weren't up to snuff, so I had to find and remove it all manually.  That trojan was a fucking badass, Spybot could find it, but not remove it, and no one else knew it was there.  I downloaded a key generator(OMG PIRATE!!!) and ran it on my computer with the suspicion that it was a threat.  I was bored, forgetting CD keys in a move will do that to you.

I've only had two relatively recent problems because I picked up that nice rpc killer on a fresh install.  It had already been patched out of winblows by the time it hit the net, as most are.(*hint*)  If the assfuckers at UPS hadn't dropped my computer I'd have been in less of a hurry to get the little shit connected and would have enabled the firewall while updating.  Six and a half weeks of telling UPS employees that they suck at their job left me in an irritable state, that insurance check is encased in six feet of lead and guarded by marines when you live in the sticks.

I haven't reformatted since I put the damned thing together either.  It's still running clean as a whistle, a whistle with a two second delay on satellite internet...  The horror.  

You're internet tards, accept it.

That depends. I don't run a firewall, because I use a router, which has a NAT Firewall built in. Anyone using a router don't need a firewall. Adding a firewall to a system on a router is just slowing down your computer for no good reason. Now, ALWAYS run an anti-virus.

No offense intended, but that is a stupid statement. I have two plaques on my office wall that insists that I make that statement.

That's not entirely true. A NAT router is not in any way a complete firewalling solution, no matter what they print on the box. While it may protect you from pretty much all (currently wild) random incoming attacks, it only works one way (unless you bought an expensive hardware firewall, or use some nifty firmware like tomato which improves protection and features radically in some routers).

Sole Soul, you're not talking about the Slammer worm are you?  I can't seem to find reference to a MDF hole in google.

If you are talking about that wonderful worm that caused havok on the internet, it was patched out several months earlier.  Only fucktards that didn't update their systems in that time got hit with it.

Crikey psychoak, I swear more than Al Pacino dude, but not on here

 I ran a ton of scans with a zillion different thing's, then one final one with a better scanner and it picked up a further 300+ trojans and what-not so psy, you still really don't know what you may have

Excuse me while I laugh hysterically at the hilarity of someone having a system that hosed.

Sorry, but I'm squeaky clean.  Either get over it or assume I'm lying.  There isn't anything hiding on my system.

Okidoki, take care, and have fun with the imminent, upcoming format

I recently decided to lower my system defences and do away with live AV & Spyware/malware blockers - I hadn't had anything worse than a tracking cookie in 20+ years of computing - not just not found but not blocked either.  I was still doing static sweeps with a random choice of various free and online scanners evey other week just to check.

I'm a very, very safe and savy internet user - or thought I was - and I had a router firewall.

Bad choice. Very bad choice.

Within a month things just weren't "feeling right" but I ran a sweep and nothing there. Two days later one of my USB devices stopped working and then Explorer started crashing.  I spotted a rogue device in Device Manager's hidden devices list but the sweeps I was doing weren't picking it up - rootkit.

It was a nasty little bugger that wanted to party with some friends so had started downloading them too.

Eventually managed to get rid of it with a combination of Malwarebytes, Spybot & NIS 2009. 

But I wasn't 100% sure so I decided to reformat anyway.

Never assume you are too smart or to aware to get caught.

One final word of warning. If you have been caught by anything check out the nature of the beast - if there is a risk that personal details could have been captured then you must change all your passwords and, if you do any financial transactions on the Web, you must notify the banks/credit card companies/etc. and they will probably insist on blocking your cards and issuing new ones.  Which is a complete pain in the arse and much more annoying that reformatting and rebuilding a system.

That's because I'm e-tarded and it's WMF.  Don't know what to blame that on.  KB912919.

For what it's worth, this thing made it past an antivirus+antispyware on if memory serves January 2nd, and MS took a week to fix it (December 28th to January 5th).  It's not so much an argument that a person needs AV as an argument that there is shit out there that is going to hit you regardless; also an argument that not everything is patched out before it hits the net.

Bulletin, patch, announcement, explanation.

Remember Murphy's Law- If something can go wrong, it will.

I've been fortunate in this respect.  In several decades of computer use, I can't recall having picked up any malicious programs on my machine (Except Windows, hurr durr :3).  Tracking cookies are as bad as it ever got.  How was this possible, you might ask?  Well, there are several factors:

1) I'm really, really lucky.  I don't count on it, so I also have...

2) A firewall up at all times.

3) An Antivirus running ASAP in the boot process.  I may turn it off later, after the comp's up and running and I need all the CPU cycles I can get, but I never go without one at startup or during online activity.

4) As many security updates as I can get.  Functionality and enhancement updates can wait, security updates cannot.

5) Know thy enemy, know thyself.  My machine's been clean partially because I've had to remove so many malicious programs from other computers, be they friends, family, business, or public.  I don't just remove them- I like to dissect them to see exactly how they did it in the first place.  It's a lot easier to counter an attack when you know how they do it.  It's also a lot easier to spot something wrong when you know exactly what you machine does when it's clean.  Any difference from the status quo throws up a red flag.

6) Don't be hasty.  "Do I really need this?" is always a legitimate question, and the answer is usually "No."  The latest software is, by definition, also the least tested, meaning it's likely rife with security holes and other problems.  Windows Vista is an excellent recent example of this- the SP1 update contained a ton of items that fall under the "Why didn't they do this from the start?" catagory.  It was so bad that a great many people decided to stick it out with XP.  Vista's managed to improve quite a bit since then, but that's not much solace for those that got burned because it hadn't received a good real-world test.  A pure gaming rig can afford to take that risk, but if I'm using a machine for something important, I prefer tried and tested programs.

7) Keep it simple.  The more you have, the more that can go wrong.  I can count all the programs in my system tray on one hand, and every one of them is an essential function.

Oddly enough, the weakest point I've seen in system defense, as revealed by my dissections, isn't the OS, the net connection, or a flaw in the security programs- it's the user.  It all boils down to an assumption by the malicious coders that people are easily manipulated idiots, and they're right.  There's no security system in existance that can protect you from your own ignorance.  Luckily, you can fix this!  All it takes is a little time and effort

 A nat firewall, coupled with Windows Firewall is all the protection you need. But let me say this, nothing catches everything. Security companies make advances, so do hackers, and such. It is, and always shall be, an unending war.