Sep

23

Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

Filed Under General 

Every second Tuesday of each month an update of the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (aka MSRT) is released.

It is a very useful little tool that can detect and remove a growing number of viruses, worms, trojans and rootkits. And the best part of it is that is free. ‘Free?’ I hear you say, ‘from Microsoft?’ And the answer is, perhaps surprisingly, ‘Yes, it is!’

According to Microsoft the tool has been used a staggering 2.7 billion times and in doing so it detected and removed 16 million instances of malware from 5.7 million infected computers. In most cases the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool removed just one single malware variant from a computer but in some cases it has removed dozens and even hundreds of malware variants from computers. This last number can be easily explained by the fact that a backdoor can download lots of other malicious programs.

How do they know, you wonder? Well, just like the error reports you voluntarily should send to Microsoft when your computer experiences a serious problem and has to shut down, the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool will send a report to Microsoft with just the basic information about the malware it detected and removed. And just like you should never disable the error reporting service, you should never stop this tool from reporting its findings to Microsoft. Both send no identifiable personal info about you or your computer to Microsoft.

Using this information Microsoft recently published a report in which some interesting points are made.

It transpired that instances of an infection dramatically fell after a particular infection was added to the Microsoft Malicious Removal Tool. Some families of malware experienced decreases greater than 75%. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Because people only use this program if and when their computers were infected.

Microsoft doesn’t make any comments about how it is possible that all that malware wasn’t blocked, detected or removed in the first place by an up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spyware product. Even now, after so much publicity and crashed computers, people are still strangely complacent about their security and privacy.

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