Threat/Virus Encyclopedias?

[Chrius56000]

. . .For some reason many A.V./A.M. vendors have removed all of the Threat/Virus Encyclopedias from their websites, these are the reference sites that named each threat, the O/S or Platform that was vulnerable to it, how it worked and what it did, and methods of disinfection/cleaning and removal, either automatically or manually.

. . .Can anyone suggest why all the A.V./A.M. vendors have done this – is it a cynical ploy simply to prevent users from being able to clean their machines themselves and instead try and suggest the only method of disinfection is to buy their software?

. . .Does anyone know if there IS still a reasonably up–to–date Threat/Virus Encyclopedia Reference online I can look up that still performs the functions mentioned above? – I'm thinking of something like Symantec "Security Response's" " Threat Encyclopedia pages!

 

[najaB]

Can anyone suggest why all the A.V./A.M. vendors have done this – is it a cynical ploy simply to prevent users from being able to clean their machines themselves and instead try and suggest the only method of disinfection is to buy their software?

The likelihood that anyone who isn't a cyber security expert could successfully manually recover from an even moderately sophisticated malware attack is next to nil.

The most probable reason for not publishing such details is to avoid giving assistance to the bad guys. That's certainly why at work we don't publish or provide details on exactly what our email filter looks for in messages.

 

[dosxuk]

I suspect the rate that malware evolves today, the amount of different strains that have similar symptoms and the rate that new malware is developed means an accurate library is next to impossible to keep updated.

Certainly much detection these days is behavioural based rather than signature, which required the accurate databases.

Frankly once a machine has been infected by any malware these days it should be thoroughly wiped rather than any sort of attempt at manually cleaning based on what a website says. It simply can't be trusted to not have other infections.