F-Secure rebuilds free Online Scanner
F-Secure’s free Online Scanner tool has been completely rebuilt to be faster, lighter and more powerful than before, and now even cleans up advanced rootkits, the most difficult-to-remove malware.
The tool, downsized to a slim 5MB, is easy to use with just a couple of clicks. It cleans without actually installing itself to the PC – so consumers can run it and then forget about it.
44 percent of consumers confess to being insecure when surfing the web due to concerns about clicking on an unsafe link that may lead to their computer getting infected,* and with good reason.
“Cyberspace is a jungle,” says Kimmo Kasslin, Director, Security Research at F-Secure Labs. “Sites that are usually trustworthy are being compromised with malware, and users can be silently infected without any overt action – simply by landing on a malicious or compromised website. That’s why it’s always a good idea to run a quick scan – even if you have another security software installed.”
Removes viruses + rootkits
Advanced rootkits boot up before the operating system itself boots up, making them extremely difficult to detect. Two of the biggest and fastest-growing botnets, TDL and ZeroAccess, use rootkit techniques to aid its spread. ZeroAccess racked up millions of infections globally in 2012, with up to 140,000 unique IPs in the US and Europe, according to F-Secure’s Threat Report H2 2012.
Rootkit removal can be complex and time consuming, often requiring the user to create a separate CD or flash drive and to spend time calling customer support. With F-Secure Online Scanner there’s no need for CDs, thanks to its new DeepClean, a Linux-based operating system that specializes in rootkit removals. When Online Scanner detects a rootkit, it boots the machine into DeepClean, which removes the malware. After the removal DeepClean boots the machine back into Windows. All this is done automatically without any user actions.
“The beauty of the new F-Secure Online Scanner is its speed, simplicity, and universality,” says Kasslin. “It’s small and light, but it’s packed with power, detecting the latest threats immediately.”