VoodooShield Latest

[oldschool]

it's great that Dan keeps developing this soft. I assume that as improvements are implemented some of them will flow by default to the Free version. It's the one site on COU that I now check regularly. Thanks for the nice catch @BryanB.

 

[vtqhtr413]

VoodooShield free has no security limitations to my knowledge, it cannot be customized to the extent of the paid version but still enough to be user friendly.

 

[oldschool]

Seems to be enough for me in default @ Always On!

 

[simmerskool]

it's great that Dan keeps developing this soft. I assume that as improvements are implemented some of them will flow by default to the Free version. It's the one site on COU that I now check regularly. Thanks for the nice catch @BryanB.

I've been having an issue with VS lately, (perhaps unique to me?) (may or may not be related to the issue Dan's been looking into re security calls), but he asked me to run the free version for awhile for testing, ie, clean install and do not use my pro registration email, but use something else to install free version, and sure enough the problem I was seeing stopped as Dan predicted. But what I find refreshing or somewhat enlightening (to me) is that the free version seems to offer protection comparable to pro version, and what free is "missing" does not really bother me, ie, free works fine. Not seeing a downside to running the free version. What am I missing?? Sure I've tweaked the pro version settings in the past, but lately & for some months, eg, with 4.28 pro I ran it at default settings, so running 4.34 free has me thinking ... ok! Also wonder, should the free version, be free?

 

[oldschool]

Very interesting - especially since I never had Pro version to compare it to. Charge for free version? Then he'd have to make the price much more attractive to convince a casual user like myself - e.g. ala ZAM. I think they priced it right for those that inquire via the free version. I got a very good multi-year deal that made it worth it to me. Plus, they run various promo reductions.

 

[vtqhtr413]

Source: VoodooShield v4 STABLE Thread


Dan posted this today.

Here is the same version 4.34, with the driver fixed and the self-protection enabled.

www.voodooshield.com/Download/InstallVoodooShield434d.exe

SHA256: 8e97daab233a51238a1421238a75d9ddcb0dea8e5113faea91d44b82f0488890

If anything at all acts weird with the self-protection enabled, please let me know! The only thing that the self-protection interfered with in the previous version was when VS was taking a snapshot, so I think we are good to go, but who knows what else the self-protection might interfere with.

 

[ForgottenSeer 58943]

I've been having an issue with VS lately, (perhaps unique to me?) (may or may not be related to the issue Dan's been looking into re security calls), but he asked me to run the free version for awhile for testing, ie, clean install and do not use my pro registration email, but use something else to install free version, and sure enough the problem I was seeing stopped as Dan predicted. But what I find refreshing or somewhat enlightening (to me) is that the free version seems to offer protection comparable to pro version, and what free is "missing" does not really bother me, ie, free works fine. Not seeing a downside to running the free version. What am I missing?? Sure I've tweaked the pro version settings in the past, but lately & for some months, eg, with 4.28 pro I ran it at default settings, so running 4.34 free has me thinking ... ok! Also wonder, should the free version, be free?

I've been talking to Dan about my ideas for 'nerfing' the free version. I wouldn't expect the free version to continue to exist in it's current form for too much longer. Personally, I think the free version gives away too much and should either have a limited trial duration, or specific limitations that may also limit it's protection and/or configurability.

 

[illumination]

I've been talking to Dan about my ideas for 'nerfing' the free version. I wouldn't expect the free version to continue to exist in it's current form for too much longer. Personally, I think the free version gives away too much and should either have a limited trial duration, or specific limitations that may also limit it's protection and/or configurability.

This will make you popular with the "i want free stuff" crowd

Personally, i would do away with the free version, and offer a 20 to 30 day trial of the paid version. It is not like he is charging $100 a license per year. The developer and company can not hand out free and maintain, which is something many of these looking for free constantly do not seem to understand. It is also a awesome feeling to support the company of your chosen/favorite product.

 

[ForgottenSeer 69673]

This will make you popular with the "i want free stuff" crowd

Personally, i would do away with the free version, and offer a 20 to 30 day trial of the paid version. It is not like he is charging $100 a license per year. The developer and company can not hand out free and maintain, which is something many of these looking for free constantly do not seem to understand. It is also a awesome feeling to support the company of your chosen/favorite product.

Been beta testing this software for a few years . Dan is awesome and one of the best developers I have see. What would you think of a beat test lic lasting 7 more years ? If you are on this forum and ask for a test Lic Dan will most likely give you one. If you join the COU forum he will give you one for sure. I was an early tester for Norton back in the 90's and even though they gave you a cd for doing so Dan goes up and beyond the call of duty.

 

[Sunshine-boy]

or specific limitations that may also limit it's protection and/or configurability.

Even the paid version of vs is already limited in the term of protection and features!
command line inspector for every process is one of them!

 

[illumination]

Been beta testing this software for a few years . Dan is awesome and one of the best developers I have see. What would you think of a beat test lic lasting 7 more years ? If you are on this forum and ask for a test Lic Dan will most likely give you one. If you join the COU forum he will give you one for sure. I was an early tester for Norton back in the 90's and even though they gave you a cd for doing so Dan goes up and beyond the call of duty.

Beta testing is abused as much as free licenses. Dan should chose a handful of the best beta testers "the ones actively helping him" and allow them testing licenses, and do away with the rest. How is he supposed to continue developing and expanding the product if everyone wants to use it for free.

This goes for any software. Users do not want to pay or support these companies but expect excellent protection from them freely.

 

[oldschool]

I'll simply reiterate: I'm more than willing to pay because I believe in the product but I'd like to see a scaled, multi-year discounted price offer. Some users are on a fixed income. Some people only want coverage for 1 machine. I fit both of these categories.

 

[simmerskool]

Source: VoodooShield v4 STABLE Thread


Dan posted this today.

Here is the same version 4.34, with the driver fixed and the self-protection enabled.

www.voodooshield.com/Download/InstallVoodooShield434d.exe

SHA256: 8e97daab233a51238a1421238a75d9ddcb0dea8e5113faea91d44b82f0488890

If anything at all acts weird with the self-protection enabled, please let me know! The only thing that the self-protection interfered with in the previous version was when VS was taking a snapshot, so I think we are good to go, but who knows what else the self-protection might interfere with.

the issue I'm having is deeper incompatibility issue that Dan has tracked to a non-VS coded dll that VS uses. He's working on a fix or substitute dll as my problem could possibly affect others. I have 4.34d installed but still running VS free aok.

 

[simmerskool]

Personally, I think the free version gives away too much .

exactly & ditto.

 

[vtqhtr413]

Dan posted this at COU today


Hey Everyone,

So here is 4.50! This version has the new reworked driver and it seems to be doing quite well.

There should only be one remaining bug… the one that is in the Nivot.SignalR dll, and Alex is working on it as we speak. This bug only affects certain users with certain VPN’s… but we need to fix it either way. Other than that, I think we are finally pretty much bug free… and it is going to stay that way .

Our digital signature expired today, so I started using another one that we had, so the first 10 or so users will probably see some warnings from smart screen and the like.

www.voodooshield.com/Download/InstallVoodooShield450.exe

SHA256: c27540a522e1e6359449a46f980b54baf48c3ce45fa0c7387895956a8f43ce6f

Thank you guys, I will catch up asap!!!

 

[ForgottenSeer 69673]

Our digital signature expired today, so I started using another one that we had, so the first 10 or so users will probably see some warnings from smart screen and the like.

Why did Dan let his digital signature expire? I guess I will wait for ten people to install it.

 

[WhyNot]

I like VS very much so far. Running with Avast free at the moment.

- When starting on the button it autostarts fine with Avast in Win 10. Set Avast to exclude VS. BUT when pushing restart VS doesnt start at all. Have to manually start it. Not a biggie, but not understandable to me.

- When hoovering over icon in activityfield+right low corner I would like to see VS version number and setting - say "Smart Mode".

- If I run Smart Mode - can malware be set to execute say half an hour later and if I have shut down Chrome and Outlook by then VS will be Off and not protect me? Always On to feel safe?

Thanks for a wonderful product!

Edit: Maybe I am learning as I go along? Free Avast in agressive mode seems to compare every execution attempt with their cloud based whitelist. So if thats a good whitelist - do I need VS whitelist protection?

 

[vtqhtr413]

Dan posted this today: VoodooShield v4 STABLE Thread

Here is 4.51beta!

The only practical way of fixing the VPN bug was to upgrade VS to .net 4.5. Since .net 4.5 is native to all recent Windows versions except Windows 7, this should work out really well since .net will not need to be installed on any endpoints except for Windows 7. Besides, I imagine at this point most Windows 7 computers have .net 4.5 installed anyway, so VS will just skip the .net install.

Hopefully the VPN bug is fixed, but if not, please let me know. Upgrading the SignalR dll will also allow us to do some really cool things with the Web Management Console.

There were only small changes to the actual VS code, so I do not think there will be any bugs with the VS code. However, there were massive changes to the installer and the dependencies, so I would not at all be surprised if we see a few bugs… although I tested the heck out of it to ensure this version was as bug free as possible, since there were so many changes.

Overall, to me it looks like VS runs even faster and smoother under the 4.5 runtime compared to the 3.5… please let me know if you guys experience this as well. You might notice that the installer grew significantly in size… this is a result of the increased size of the dependencies that are packaged with the installer.

SHA-256: 3fa2a59e81bf9d43511a5751cb7ea24d4a38bb8e3a41c9dd4ecb5cb5da3183b2

www.voodooshield.com/Download/InstallVoodooShield451beta.exe

Have a great weekend, thank you guys!

I like VS very much so far. Running with Avast free at the moment.

- When starting on the button it autostarts fine with Avast in Win 10. Set Avast to exclude VS. BUT when pushing restart VS doesnt start at all. Have to manually start it. Not a biggie, but not understandable to me.

- When hoovering over icon in activityfield+right low corner I would like to see VS version number and setting - say "Smart Mode".

- If I run Smart Mode - can malware be set to execute say half an hour later and if I have shut down Chrome and Outlook by then VS will be Off and not protect me? Always On to feel safe?

Thanks for a wonderful product!

Edit: Maybe I am learning as I go along? Free Avast in agressive mode seems to compare every execution attempt with their cloud based whitelist. So if thats a good whitelist - do I need VS whitelist protection?

I haven't used VS since the last stable release and haven't used Avast for a couple years but VoodooShield forum link is at the top of this post.

 

[ForgottenSeer 69673]

Is Dan going to fix the smart screen issues because of using an old LIC?

 

[vtqhtr413]

From Dan, 7/14

Nice to meet you WhyNot!

VS's whitelisting feature is quite different from all of the other whitelisting products. We have several proprietary and patented features that allows VS to do things that other products cannot do. Well, if they do, please let me know

. Anyway, VS is not actually an application whitelisting utility... it certainly shares some similarities, but it is much more appropriate to classify VS as a user-friendly toggling computer lock. There are not any other user-friendly toggling computer lock, so there is probably not a class to put VS in, which is probably why most people just classify it as an application whitelisting utility.

Let me explain how I came up with the idea / concept for VS, and that will help explain what VS is all about, and how it is so incredibly different from all of the other products. The night I came up with the idea, it was 3am and I was removing malware for 2 different clients on 2 different laptops. At that time, I had been a computer consultant for 13 years, and the one question people kept asking me over and over again was “I have antivirus software, how did I get a virus?”. For the longest time, it was difficult for me to explain to my clients why they were infected even though they had antivirus software installed. I knew innately why it was so… but I just could not put it into words… especially words that they would understand. I love my clients, but most of them are extreme computer novices, and they would never understand such things .

Anyway, it was 3am and I started removing the malware, and the first thing I did was to bring up the task manager so I could start investigating the malware. When I opened the task manager, the malware immediately killed it, and simply would not let me open the task manager or any other software. Out of pure frustration, I said out loud “man, if I could just do what the malware is doing to the computer / me, but be first, so that I was in control… then we would not have this problem”. So then I was thinking… man, we just need to take a snapshot of all of the running processes, and not let anything else start unless we allowed it. Then 20 seconds later I thought to myself… no, that would be a huge pain to have to manually allow everything… a fulltime lock is certainly not the answer.

Then a few minutes later, I was looking down at the clock because I knew it was getting late, and that is when I happened to imagine a desktop shield gadget / computer lock, that the user could manually click on the toggle the computer lock from OFF to ON. So then I was thinking… you know, there might be something to this.

Then another few minutes later, once I was actually able to start programs without the malware killing them, I opened a web browser, and out of shear coincidence, I happened to imagine the lock / desktop shield gadget toggling from OFF to ON as I opened a web browser. And I was like… “That’s it!!! Whenever I am doing something risky on the computer, it needs to be locked. Then when I am not doing anything risky, the protection will automatically toggle to OFF.”

So then I started to get excited about this concept and called an acquaintance (who was a developer for Hallmark Cards at the time) the next day to tell him the idea. He loved the idea and we got to work immediately on VS.

Keep in mind application whitelisting was very uncommon back then and there were very, very few application whitelisting products on the market. The only one that I heard about was Faronics Anti-Executable (there were others but they are no longer around)… and the only reason I heard about it was because our patent attorney found their patent during the patent search. Luckily the concept of VS did not infringe on their patent at all… and the reason is quite simple… VS is not an application whitelisting product… it is a toggling computer lock .

As far as global / cloud whitelisting is concerned… it is definitely a worthwhile security mechanism, but it certainly is nowhere nearly as effective as locking the computer. First, look at the link below… there are roughly 3.5 times the number of safe files compared to malware.

Statistics - VirusTotal

This cracks me up… the industry has been saying now for a very long time that “Antivirus cannot keep up with all of the new malware.” Ummm… if they cannot keep up with the blacklist or signatures, how are they going to keep up with a whitelist that is roughly 3.5 times larger? Not only that, but how do they absolutely guarantee that a file they are adding to the global cloud whitelist is 100% safe.

Also, keep in mind, I currently have 220 items on my whitelist (I just checked )… compare that to millions or billions of items on a global cloud whitelist. I mean, if you are a bouncer at a bar, you can handle 220 people… but you cannot handle millions or billions.

See, AV companies have malware detection machines (sandboxes) running 24x7 to continually analyze all of the new samples. These machines are quite similar to Cuckoo Sandbox, but I am certain that most of them are much more sophisticated and accurate. No offense to Cuckoo… it is a phenomenal product, but a lot of AV companies have a massive budget and research / development team that is able to create some really cool stuff.

But anyone who has been working with malware long enough will tell you that even the most sophisticated malware detection machines have limitations… severe limitations. This is equally true for the machine learning / Ai products. The cybersecurity companies also have malware researchers who supplement the automatic analysis performed by these machines, but it is a massive workload and they can never keep up. Not only that, but from my experience, all malware detection mechanisms can be tricked… including VoodooAi.

And since they can be tricked, if security is important enough to the end user, the only reasonable solution is to install a deny-by-default product, as opposed to an allow-by-default product. I prefer VS because it is not a constant lock as it offers the end user multiple levels of protection. Think of it this way… do you use an umbrella when it is not raining? No, that would be a huge pain, right? For the very same reason, computers should not be locked fulltime.
VS is the only product that is able to automatically and dynamically adjust the level of protection based on the end user’s activities. If the end user is engaging in risky behavior, the security product should be more aggressive (well, the computer should be locked). If the end user is playing Microsoft Solitaire, writing a letter, using Quickbooks, etc., the level of protection should be lowered.

Since its inception, the security industry has only focused on HOW users become infected, and as far as I know, VS is the only product that also focuses on WHEN the user becomes infected. Having said that… the security industry has come a very, very long way in the last 6-7 years, and there are tons of truly amazing products on the market now. They all offer one level of protection (unless the user manually changes a setting or disables the product), which is more than sufficient for when the end user is not engaging in a risky activity such as browsing the web or checking email. But when the user is engaging in risky activity, I think it is wise to automatically lock the computer with VS . Besides, VS complements all AV’s very, very nicely… and actually, with most AV products, when VS toggles to OFF, it should actually stop all protections and not block anything… and basically let the AV do its thing. At some point we will implement this, but a lot of users are now running just VS with Windows Defender, because it has improved drastically over the last couple of years… and basically, I am just being a little extra cautious for now.

So back to my originally story. If a user were to ask me today “I have antivirus software, how did I get a virus”, I would simply say… “because your computer was not locked when you were at risk”.


As far as your other questions / recommendations go…

- VS doesnt start every time anymore. Last Win 10 update could be the problem? Dan will fix?
This should be fixed in 4.51, but if not, please let me know!
- I would like to see ie "Voodooshield ver 4.50 in Smart Mode" when I hoover over the icons.
Interesting… do you mean when you hover over the desktop shield gadget? Thank you for the suggestion… we might be able to do something really cool with that .
- Can Malware be set to execute say one hour after arrival? If so, will Smart Mode protect me if I have shut down Chrome and Outlook and VS is Off? Is always ON the only way?
No… this should not be a concern. I guess technically someone could hack a website and create a timer that would fire in an hour or so, but this is highly unlikely. Besides, even when VS is OFF, it is VERY protective when it comes to web apps, and VS should easily block something like this. Now, if you are talking about a standard malware executable… remember, the executable has to run first in order to be able to start a timer .

Wow… longest post ever . Hopefully the other ones will go a little quicker . Thank you!