Torrent Clients......

[MichaelT]

I really had to make this post but had no idea as to where to place it.
Its been 7 years that I've been using uTorrent DAILY without ANY infections due to its use.

My browser (Firefox) has been hijacked quite often following news and current affairs links (I hated getting Rick Rolled).
I have a USER account, not an ADMINISTRATOR account that I surf the net and DL with.
My USER browser is B/U to the Admin account, so deleting the browser if infected and reinstalling is no big issue.
I have avast! Home Free, MBAM Pro, and OA Firewall. The only REAL protection I get is avast!, nothing else catches anything, avast! is my 1st line of defence.
Paying for MBAM Pro was a waist of money, I will come back to SBS&D when 2.0 final is released.

This 'THING' you have regarding the use of torrent clients, I don't get it....
Why have a member delete this program when its more likely to get infected following current affairs links, than surfing for porn or DLing torrents?!
Even when I had XP Pro, I never got infected from torrents, I was more likely to get infected from an email back then, but avast! has always caught it quickly.
It was a big jump from 32 bit XP to 64 bit W7 on my HP ENVY 3290NR 3D and I feel that my likelihood of getting a serious dedicated 64 bit infection is minimal, especially because I have a USER ACCOUNT for surfing the net, and I DL torrents/programs to a separate hard drive, not the drive that includes my OS, or a partition of my drive that includes my OS.

I also install my 'GAMES' I DL(torrents/cracked) to separate drive, as recommended by the makers, not on a partition on the OS drive.

Now for the Nitty Gritty......
Windows recommends that you start a USER account, this is, as I understand, the same as LINUX ([UNIX]and its offshoots/MAC/Android/etc) as you do not have 'ROOT' (ADMINISTRATOR in Windows) permission for an infection to get to your OS. An infection can bugger up a lot of programs, but it will not get to the OS, it will not have permission to execute(.exe) unless you let it buy giving it the permission to install.

This is the same for game makers, do not install the program to your OS or a partition of your OS drive, this is what they recommend, even more so with DL'd game files.

Why is there no 'STICKY', on any of your threads, anywhere on your forum enforcing the the BASIC operating structure, recommended by Windows(Microsoft) to do your daily work from a USER ACCOUNT?
Yet you insist that a simple torrent program be removed if infected.

[tashi]

Hello MichaelT,

More than one helper has experienced a user re-infecting their machine via file sharing during a cleanup in progress.
Because of this if a volunteer is assisting you with the removal of malware it is their choice if they ask for the removal of P2P-Torrent clients during the clean up.

http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=282

I also install my 'GAMES' I DL(torrents/cracked) to separate drive,

(torrents/cracked) ?

[Wakefield]

Is it possible for strong malware like Zeus to escalate privilege such that if it gets in-say via Java or Flash exploit-during use of a browser on a non-administrator account,it can take over the computer as if it were running with administrator privileges?

[tashi]

Hello Wakefield,

Malware has long exploited vulnerabilities that enabled an escalation of privileges, administrator-level access to systems compromised.

While we are on the subject.

Windows Kernel Integer Overflow Vulnerability - CVE-2012-2529

Published: Tuesday, October 09, 2012

An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when the Windows kernel improperly handles objects in memory. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code in kernel mode. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full administrative rights.

Recommendation. Most customers have automatic updating enabled and will not need to take any action because this security update will be downloaded and installed automatically. Customers who have not enabled automatic updating need to check for updates and install this update manually. For information about specific configuration options in automatic updating, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 294871.
For administrators and enterprise installations, or end users who want to install this security update manually, Microsoft recommends that customers apply the update at the earliest opportunity using update management software, or by checking for updates using the Microsoft Update service.