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Here is the biggest piece of advice when it comes to Anti-Virus software:
Better safe than sorry.
Yes, some of them are slow to update, but some are also quite fast. Some have 'agreements' to not block certain items, as well (green lantern won't be detected by most of the major anti-virus companies).
Personally, I use AVG for my Windows boxes. I'm non-commercial, so it's free, which is nice. It's regularly updated, even nicer. And, did I mention it's free?
Takes hardly any resources on your PC to keep it up and running, and in the 2 years I have been using it, I haven't been infected on this machine. However, my other PC that has McAfee or Norton installed (depends on what I find first after the re-install phase, I tear it down quite often), will usually get attacked at least once due to some outside factor. The most recent being a friend coming over and grabbing a video file from the net.
As for software firewalls, they're not bad, and well worth having as another measure of protection. However, they are not the end all be all of security, either. If you're infected, what good does it do you to stop that infection from spreading? You're data is already at risk, so now you're going to have to deal with that. How about if the code that is on your machine simply runs a script to call iexplore.exe or some other 'trusted' program, so that it can use it as a conduit to send the data?
Wouldn't be that hard to create a simple script that uploaded the results of keystrokes as a .html file using the 'PUT' command already in most HTML browsers. Granted, it's gotten better in regards to some measures of PC security. However, the proof's of concept for attacks like this are already out there, all someone has to do is find a good way to implement them, and that'll be when the reality sets in.
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