A few weeks ago, my PC was somehow infected with some nasty thing that tried to turn it in to a spambot via driveby download. I had the current version of Symantec AntiVirus running, set to the absolute highest paranoia levels and updated daily. I also had Spybot Search & Destroy running, again, updated daily and carefully configured. I had both do full system scans every day, as well as keeping them memory-resident at all times.
Neither program ever gave so much as a peep. In fact, when I found the original file that was to blame and checked it manually with Symantec AV, it passed as though it were as innocent as a babe. If I hadn’t had the antivirus software configured to show me an icon in the systray when it was checking outgoing mail, who knows when I would have realized that the system was compromised? As it was, I knew within seconds. (Hey, I notice “outgoing mail” when my email program isn’t even open.) I ended up pulling out the ethernet cable to stop communications ’til the system was clean.
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