Spybot Search and Destroy 2.3 review (removal test)

Cleaning up a badly infected system with several tools, starting with spybot search and destroy.

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Closed Caption:

hello and welcome to the peace security
Channel today I'll be doing a removal
test and uh the product we'll be using
is Spybot Search and Destroy as the name
suggests this is a malware removal
utility and um this is a system that
really needs something like that it is
terribly infected with uh quite a few
samples let me just show you Hitman Pro
Scan of the system we've got some risk
wear some malware
Trojans all sorts of
things
and on a side note I'd like to add that
nowadays we're getting malware that is
very well disguised and hidden and
they're really difficult to analyze and
detect unless of course you run a scan
because uh they don't really do a lot of
stuff that you can see previously we had
malware that would run around as a
process forever and you could just open
task manager and see that okay
something's weird something weird is
going on but we've got all this malware
and none of it is
actually making itself very um I mean
it's not very active and it's not making
its
um presence felt but if we take a look
at startup let's see here we've got
plenty of stuff that uh to indicate that
the system's heavily infected as you can
see now this is not a legit
program man core antivirus that's funny
service Host this not how it should
start and uh what what on Earth is this
and this so clearly this is a badly
infected
system
so in this
test we'll be using uh Spybot Search and
Destroy so let's see what it can search
and uh find and ultimately destroy so I
will do a full system scan with this
thing and I will be back whenever this
is done I feel that this going take a
while okay let's uh just see what kind
of options they give you start a scan
scan for usage
tracks so they don't really ask you too
many things they just um scan the moment
you hit start a scan so I'll do
whichever is their basic scan and uh
we'll see what it finds so I'll be right
back with the
results so there's just a couple of
things I'd like to mention here first of
all just want to show you guys that it
was indeed up to date when I started the
scan and secondly now it's asking me to
reboot and scan again to find items that
may only be uncovered after a reboot
so basically it's asking me to hit yes
so that's what I'll do and now it's
going to complete the scan and then it's
going to reboot and try to clean up
everything so I'll be back uh when the
entire process is complete and hopefully
it'll give me a full report of all the
things it detects now this thing does
claim to have the features to detect all
sorts of malware although they have uh
specialized in spyware
let me just show you their advanced
settings they also have a pro version
which gives you some realtime
protection so I wanted to check out
their signatures to see if uh it's any
use testing out the pro
version so it takes a while to load
obviously because I'm doing the scan and
um these are all the categories that
you've got here you've got adware dollar
fraud hijackers key loggers malware
pups security spyware Trojans so pretty
much everything so they do have a wide
range of
um detections so I'll be back when the
scan is complete it seems to
be taking a while it's a pretty long
scan so I guess it's scanning the whole
system so I'll be back with the
results the searching process is now
complete now it's time for Destruction
so let's see what it's found it's got
plenty of registry keys here 1 two 3 4
pretty much everything is a registry key
apart from uh this which is an
executable it's also we'll startup item
as we just
saw
and I don't see any other executables
here let just uh take a look at the
startup item
again yes this is the
one so it looks like um Spybot has found
quite a few uh things let's uh give it a
chance to clean up says 17 results so
I'll hit uh fix selected everything
selected so let's wait for it to remove
everything okay so it looks like it has
removed everything now as um it ask me
I'm going to reboot and then we'll start
our evaluation
process to see what it has missed and
then we'll will finally decide if it was
a good job or not cuz right now it's
very difficult to interpret these scan
results so I'll reboot the computer if
Spybot ask me to do something else I'll
resume the
video all right so the system has booted
up in kind of a safe mode as you can see
there's nothing running just Spybot so
they want me to do a scan
right now in this uh mode to catch some
stuff that might have been missed in the
previous scan so I will scan once again
and I'll be back when the scan is
done the second scan just completed and
it didn't find anything else just a
cookie so no big deal fix
that and now I hope uh when I close it
it's going to reboot Boot
and windows okay so it just loads up
Windows
fine so now let's start evaluating how
it did so the first scanner we'll be
using is uh commodo cleaning Essentials
it looks like this uh fake AV thing is
still
running and um so I'll do a scan with
kodo cleaning Essentials a full scan and
I'll be back with the
results
Komodo finished scanning and it says it
found seven threats so let's take a look
at those items and there you go first of
all this uh supporter service dll which
is probably a
Trojan Komodo calls it app unwanted
maybe it was the riskware it's got a
couple of
more app unwanted
here they say it's low
risk but I don't like the place where
where this one's located
so that's not a good thing and um now
here is the real deal the service host
executable and the registry key that
enables it to start up
so both of the major malware
infections were
caught so it looks
like
Spybot Search and Destroy couldn't
search or destroy these um piece of
malware that's not great news is it and
we also have a modified hosts and
disabled user account control I don't
really care about this but the modified
host file should have been
caught so anyway we'll remove these
infections so I'll hit
apply and now that it's
done I'm going to reboot the the system
and complete uh kamado's job and then
I'll scan with NN power Razer and let's
see if it detects anything
else power razor beta has completed
scanning and it has found a lot more
stuff now this is a directory which is
bad status which means it's confirmed
malware now this is another weird
looking control panel item and it's in
startup so definitely that's not a good
thing then we've got this uh run dll 32
that keeps prompting me every time I
restart the computer so this is
definitely a piece of
malware and uh here's another file so
plenty more stuff found by NN Power
Riser so we'll fix
those and one once um this thing's
complete I will scan with uh maltes so
I'll be back with the results from Mal
byes now it's Mal byes turn to uh show
us what it's found and it's found quite
a lot of stuff um we've got a file over
here and program files that can be good
news and we've got uh a lot of Po
registry key modifications the file is
also a p and and that's basically no
we've also got a trojan agent this is an
entire
folder and we've got a file ah this
looks terrible and hijack shell this is
some more registry data that's malicious
and we've got plenty of popps and War
mod run Trojan self delete okay all
right so it's found this
one more instances of this I guess and
wow so we've still got a lot of stuff on
this computer we've got mainly a pup
which is spread out as registry keys
files and pretty much everything
and we've got Trojan agent
worm hijack shell Trojan agent Trojan
agent so still a lot of stuff on this
computer so I'll go ahead and let malare
bites quarantine all of
this and then I'll do a scan with uh MC
soft and I'll be back with those
results so let's take a look at what MC
soft has CAU it's found uh 10 nine
registry
keys flagged AS application ad Genie so
some kind of
adware and then we've got adware be
protector this is one file still left
over so
wow lots of things on this system so
I'll remove these I'll send them to
corantin and now that it's
done I'll do a scan with Hitman Pro and
let's see if we still have anything left
over so finally a clean
system as as you saw we needed a lot of
tools to get the system cleaned which
further highlights the need for
multi-layered
security and as per Spybot well we did
use a lot of tools and Spybot seems to
be the one with the least
contribution so it was probably the
least effective tool in our entire test
case it did a pretty long scan I had to
scan twice and still it only found only
one of the many pieces of malware that
were on the system it just CAU one major
file so basically just removed one major
infection it removed a bunch of registry
keys but still then there were a
ridiculous amount of leftover registry
keys CAU by MC soft and Mal byes
so they do claim to have a better
detection on their pro versions but
having seen the effectiveness of um
their free version I would not try to
test those claims especially because
they don't give you a trial to their pro
version so you have to pay if you want
to give it a try at all so at the moment
I definitely would not trust them with
my money based on the performance that
I've seen over here there definitely
better Solutions out there and even if
their pro version does better why would
you care there's so many good uh
removal utilities out there and all of
of them are free all of the utilities
I've used over here are free apart from
Hitman Pro which um you have to pay to
remove but it's free to scan so
basically it's payware but all of the
rest are free and uh yeah I don't really
see a reason why you would pay for
Spybot it doesn't seem to be doing a
good job so I hope you guys uh enjoyed
this
review hope this gave you a fair idea
about today's hour and uh how to remove
it
and just um hopefully it got the idea of
multi-layer security into your minds
because as you saw no single engine was
enough to clean most of the malware
Komodo couldn't do it neither could
nordon power Razer neither could malware
bites or MC soft they all had to be used
and they all kept finding other stuff
after one had reported the system to be
cleaned so that clearly shows why we
need zero day protection and multi-layer
security so hope you guys enjoyed this
review I'll see you guys in the next
video have a nice day and stay tuned for
more updates