Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, Microsoft recently introduced a change into Windows to introduce a marketing message into Windows 10 to promote the use of Microsoft's OneDrive cloud file-sharing service, which has both free and paid tiers of usage. More information on this behavior can be found on Microsoft's web site at: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/save-screenshots-to-onedrive-automatically-d04df71c-1cb0-4ad6-9f9c-b08494d79d6a For now, clicking on the small, faint "No, thanks" towards the bottom of the Microsoft OneDrive advertisement should disable this functionality. There is probably a way to programmatically disable this advertisement via registry editing, PowerShell or Group Policy templates, but I have not investigated this thoroughly. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

[Admin note: One more more off-topic messages were removed. Please keep comments relevant to the discussion at hand. AG]

Hello, You may also find the following ESET Knowledgebase Articles of use/interest: • ESET KB #73, What operating systems are ESET products compatible with? (Home Users) • ESET KB #7292, Microsoft Windows Support Policy and ESET products However, as my colleague Marcos noted, it is best to use the most recent version of your operating system as possible, as that is the one which is going to be most up-to-date in terms of security features and fixes. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, You can download the previous version of ESET Internet Security (version 12.2.30.0) from: 64-bit: https://download.eset.com/com/eset/apps/home/eis/windows/v12/latest/eis_nt64.exe 32-bit: https://download.eset.com/com/eset/apps/home/eis/windows/v12/latest/eis_nt32.exe This should allow you to get up and running with your protection immediately, but please contact support directly via this form so that they can help you investigate why version 13 was not working on your computer. As this is a new release, the engineers are very interested in troubleshooting issues like the one you reported. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, NSO Group, is the company which is reportedly the developer of the Pegasus, if this Wikipedia article is to be believed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group. ESET's researchers have written a few articles about it in various languages on the WeLiveSecurity blog. I have not looked into the reporting in detail, but if the spyware installs itself on targets' devices with high enough privileges, it probably just waits until encrypted content is decrypted, and then passes those decrypted contents on to its operators. That way, there's no need to spend any time breaking the encryption. Regards Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, If you are in the United States, you can call ESET's technical support department toll-free at +1 (866) 343-3738. Regards, |Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, While ESET does not condone software piracy (or any other kind of piracy, for that matter)*, neither is ESET the software police. That said, it is important to keep in mind that peer-to-peer file sharing programs can be bundled with potentially unwanted applications, adware or even outright malware. They can also introduce privacy issues, such as the leaking of sensitive or confidential information due to improper configuration, as well as security vulnerabilities which can be subject to exploitation by threat actors. And, of course, there is also malware which may make use of peer-to-peer networks for various reasons, from spreading as a worm, for use as command-and-control infrastructure, exfiltration of stolen data, and so forth. Web sites involved in the facilitation of software piracy often have limited opportunities for revenue generation, as legitimate advertising networks, payment processors, e-commerce providers and other businesses may be unable or unwilling to do business with them for legal or other reasons. As such, these web sites may turn to other means of funding continued operation, including the display of advertisements from less-than-reputable ad networks/brokers, which may introduce malicious advertisements (malvertising) using exploit kits to compromise a computer through the web browser, to other schemes, such as mining cryptocurrency in the web browser to generate revenue for the site operator. Another thing to consider is that many customers do not want programs which facilitate the theft of intellectual property on their computers and networks. The reasons for this can range from the mundane (wanting to avoid legal liability) to concerns about more draconian actions: In Russia, software piracy can be treated as a criminal matter by the Russian federal tax police, and having pirated software on computers can lead to the arrest and imprisonment of employees, harsh financial penalties the dissolution of a company and/or the forced transfer of a company's assets. This happened to several non-profits who were accused of pirating Microsoft software in Russia. To their credit, Microsoft quickly responded by providing the Russian non-profits with legal licenses for its software, and now makes its software free for use by non-profits in Russia in order to prevent this from happening again. While that is an extreme kind of scenario, it does show how regimes can use software piracy as a pretext to shut down organizations of which they do not approve. From time to time, ESET has talked about some of the malware using and abusing peer-to-peer networks, probably the most famous of which is the Conficker worm. Some additional examples of malware which make use of peer-to-peer networks, can be found on ESET's VirusRadar site: MSIL/Antinny Python.Filecoder.P (ransomware targeting .torrent files) Win32/AutoRun.IRCBot.FE Win32/Skopvel Win32/TrojanDownloader.Agent.PUC Win64/GoBot2 Further information about risks, as well as mitigations, can be found on ESET's WeLiveSecurity blog: Limewire, free software and the for-fee membership BitTorrent family susceptible to DRDoS attacks Mac malware spread disguised as cracked versions of Angry Birds, Pixelmator and other top apps How black hats misuse the torrent ecosystem for fun and profit As previously stated, ESET is not the software police. ESET does, however, have a stated goal of protecting its customers from threats, and those threats can come from many sources, including peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, applications and their associated web sites. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky *ESET holds no position on Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Hello, A list of removed programs can be found at https://support.eset.com/kb3527/#removable. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, ESET is open to new ideas and suggestions. Just don't expect all of them to be implemented, especially if they offer little added benefit to ESET's customers. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, I believe you'll find some of the requested functionality in various programs such as ESET SysInspector, ESET SysRescue Live CD, the ESET Rogue Applications Remover and various other malware removal tools. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, ESET could improve its results in tests done by some testers by adding junk files that are damaged, non-executable, contain only data, are otherwise non-threatening, but are detected by other anti-malware programs. Would you like ESET to add detection of junk because those other vendors have included those files? Just because a plethora of companies are doing something doesn't make it right, or even that it offers a benefit to their customers, for that matter. Adding features for marketing reasons is not a path I would like to ESET go down, and I suspect at least some of our customers feel the same way. There are lots of features, enhancements and improvements that ESET has yet to make to its software, and some of those will come out of message threads like this one. So, I encourage you to keep asking and making recommendations. But, also keep in mind that ESET is takes its customers' security seriously and wants to develop technologies that do that, and not spend its time and efforts trying to win marketing battles with competitors. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, Cookies are not malicious. While they may (or may not) represent privacy issues, they do not represent a threat to user security. Malicious advertisements are blocked all the time. If you want to block tracking, all ads, etc., I would suggest looking at what plugins are available for your web browser. HIPS updates occur as part of the regular updating of modules used by ESET Smart Security. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, False alarms on a web site are a big deal. They affect: Whomever owns the web site. Whomever visits the web site. The credibility of the company which generated the the false positive alarm to begin with. It has been my experience that people who visit web sites do not always know when a report of a problem is a false alarm or not. They might assume it is, and it turns out to be a legitimate report and they get infected. Or, they may contact the site operator or their anti-malware solutions provider, creating a support burden. Just because eight, eighty or eight hundred anti-malware companies do something does not mean that ESET should follow them down the "me, too" path. ESET chooses to implement technologies when they provide a tangible benefit to the computing public. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, I simply used Web of Trust as an example of someone who does a reputational toolbar as their core business. As far as I know, all the other companies you mentioned (Avast ... Webroot) make the majority of their money elsewhere. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had to jump through numerous hoops to get my own personal website reclassified (whitelisted), when my previous employer saw fit to advise everyone that my site was unsafe due to its lack of reputation. Now, I was able to get that cleared up in several days, but it took me several days and I had to to take advantage of some professional courtesies (e.g., the fact that I was a founder of that company as well as someone who currently worked at a competitor) in order to get them to update their database. And I was lucky, I had industry contacts to worth through. If I did not have those backchannels, who knows how many weeks or months it would have taken. This difficulty in (1) classifying sites properly to begin with; and (2) responding promptly to reclassification requests makes me believe that there is little additional value offered by site advisory services. Am I biased by my own experiences with a false positive alarm and subsequent difficulties getting that fixed? Yes, I certainly am. But, I also cannot help but wonder how difficult it would be for me get things cleared had I not been able to able to use my contacts. Lots of other companies offer varieties of different services, as a means of providing a layered approach, offering some form product differentiation, or even just performing feature parity for reviewers (i.e., "checkbox compliance"), but that does not necessarily mean that the option, feature or service passes the "works reasonably well" that I think is one of the reasons people choose ESET's software over others in a very crowded, competitive market. Maybe, one day, ESET will offer some kind of add-on, plugin or toolbar that provides a deterministic form of site advisory reputational data. But given what I've seen so far, I just don't feel this technology currently passes the "works reasonably well" criteria as a whole, industry-wide. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

Hello, Browser plugins are an interesting idea, partially because they can allow for feedback in some interesting ways in the UI, but in terms of content [i.e., what the plugin does] I personally feel it is kind of a "landmine area" (for lack of better term). When you get involved in reputational-scoring of web sites, you pick up several additional areas in your workload. For example: Building and maintaining the site-crawling system (which includes back-end databases, integration into existing systems for research, development, QA, support, etc.). Dealing with false-positive reports. Dealing with false-negative reports. Dealing with reclassification requests. Dealing with attempts to game or manipulate the results. ...and so forth And that's just what I came up with off the top of my head. If you take a look in the Malware Finding and Cleaning section of the forum, you'll note that there are a lot of requests that focus around these types of issues, except for downloaded software as opposed to web sites (although there some discussions surrounding blocked web sites as well). I suspect most users probably visit websites more often than the download and install software, so you can imagine how the amount of work required to adequately manage something like that if the number of requests coming in were to increase by, say, two orders of magnitude. That's not to say that this is a bad idea, or that such scaling issues are not solvable. There are companies like Web of Trust who do this as their core business, and my initial inclination would be to steer people to a service like that, if that's what they're looking for. However, I'd also point out that web reputation systems don't necessarily tell you if a site is malicious or not; they might might tell you something about the relative volume of activity that the site gets, or is mentioned in, but there's still quite a bit of difference between something like Alexa or Google's Page Rank and, say, ESET's Live Grid. Ultimately, what I think it comes down to, though, is ESET's philosophy of doing things. It's been my observation since arriving at the company that it focuses on the areas where it can create products that work reasonably well. That's actually expanded or been tweaked a little over the years to encompass not just creating products, but occasionally partnering with companies or even acquiring them outright (the familiar "build, partner or buy" refrain), but the focus has always remained on the "working reasonably well" part. I am pretty satisfied with ESET's approach of blocking outright malicious sites, prompting of sites that might contain potentially unwanted content, and the parental controls type functionalities that ESET provides. Personally, having to have gone through several hoops (accompanied with lots of shouting, calling in of favors, veiled threats and the occasional hint of a bribe of an alcoholic and/or chocolate nature) to get a former employer's site advisor service to whitelist my own personal web site, I have some lingering concerns about how well such services work. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky