There have been plenty of times I've seen "Antimalware Service Executable" shoot to the top of Task Manager

"not disable the built in anti virus that comes with most modern OS's" correct me if I'm wrong, but Windows is really the only one that implements a (half-assed) anti-virus

Mac OS has general security warning for unknown publisher applications and Linux I know essentially has nothing built in

RE zero day exploits; this is really not that common IMO. I develop FDA medical devices (part 11 CFR and 510K) that run a custom embedded linux OS and the last exploit we patch for is dirty COW. I'm 100% certain there have been dozens of new exploits found and even publicly documented but I have seen 0 issues. As part of FDA submission we also get our products professionally pen tested by at least 3 different vendors and none of them have ever come back and said hey we were able to gain root privelege via exploit

My computer came with McCafe, it itself may as well be a virus. Has pop ups you can’t close for ex amount of time begging you to buy it, blue windows popups “your antivirus expired” etc

McAfee and Norton are the two biggest ones I know of that come pre-installed on Windows by the manufacturer and they both love popping up with "PLEASE BUY OUR SOFTWARE". I wouldn't be surprised if they used some shady practices like "32 Potential Problems found! Please upgrade to full protection to ensure your safety!!"

Not very much unlike the fake system scan scam ads

I will probably remove McAfee from my PC sooner or later since it’s not actually doing anything

*do it*

_do it_

Aight ty

Zero day exploits happen all the time. You just have to look at the ransomware attacks from a few years ago and see multiple of those used previously unknown zero-day exploits. One of them used an SMB exploit to spread through company networks to people like you who think that just because they use good practices they are secure. There was also another one that used another zero-day exploit that was previously only known to the NSA before it got leaked and then used to spread the ransomware. For non Windows examples, Linux had a exploit a few years ago where somebody found an exploit in SSH to be able to get into non-updated servers through the SSH. There was also just a few months ago a root escalation zero day attack exploit found in Linux.

According to Apple's own website, Macs include antivirus by default.

The half asses anti virus is really the sentiment of older versions of Windows defender, they actually make the one in Windows 10 fairly good. I use Linux without WINE (the main way to get user environment viruses/malware) but I help friends and family all the time. In general I tell them to trust the built in anti virus based on the virus scan reports I've read from recuable security companies unless they have a particular reason like my grandfather who clicks on almost anything and gets so many risky emails or my Aunt who had access to sensitive healthcare data for her job when working at home on her personal computer.

What he meant I think was that windows is the *only* one to put an av on out of the box. The emphasis was on `only`, not on `barely good` (paraphrasing)

I think

Basically windows is the only one who does it, and the one they have is barely good. I don't agree with barely good, but I think that's what he meant.
Ig you said other do have it though

@Stargatemaster96 out of curiosity what 3rd party free av would you consider one of the best?

That's precisely what I'm saying with Linux. There are all these available exploits, unknown and known, and more and more being discovered often; yet you don't see any antivirus implemented by default. That's probably because security policies and safe practices will trump any av system. Re Mac; I have a Mac and if they have a built in av it's fairly silent and light but I'm not so sure there is one and by that I mean one that does background scanning or active scanning malicious software

Less of a replacement for built in anti virus but to complement I used to use Malwarebytes free.

They have one line on their site hinting at one but go on to explain that it's mainly safe due to the system architecture and not some named active piece of software

one issue with linux is all antivirus software relies on proprietary internals

meaning no open sourced antivirus

besides, an antivirus isnt really needed if you use a relatively up-to-date build

linux users shouldnt need an antivirus to tell them not to run shady executables as root

Linux you can use ClamAV thou I think it's mainly to detect windows viruses.

ye

Linux is perfectly capable of running proprietary software

Not a prerequisite

well yes

ClamAV is open source and uses open signature databases.

but no open source program would bundle proprietary crapware

or open source OS

I agree it's mainly crapware. But oss OS' do bundle proprietary software and driver's. As long as they properly attribute and the closed software package allows it. Perfect example is Ubuntu will prompt the user at install whether they want to include 3rd party proprietary software like mp3 libs

But again I've never seen a Linux distro with built in av. There are hundreds tho so I'm sure there is one but I bet their goal and mission statement is to cater to "new" Linux users and include it for a false sense of security

thats true

AV rarely provides real security

unless we are talking about enterprise shit like sophos

real security comes from not being a fucking idiot

Or for those that dual boot with windows and may use WINE.

My problem with sentiment like that is that malware does not necessarily need you to be stupid, only somebody else on your network to be stupid or you not keeping software up to date. That or for there to be a zero day that you are unaware of. People seem to think of only traditional viruses while modern attacks use a variety of malicious programs that can propagate in other ways.