The Cleaner: A Review

Good afternoon to all you happy blog followers. Today we are going to investigate a software package called Moosoft’s The Cleaner. The Cleaner is an anti-malware and anti-Trojan virus protection which is said to compliment the virus protection on your Windows computer.

It offers heuristics detection to catch the unknown viruses or to detect new variants of known viruses. Heuristic analysis is often performed by the anti-virus software by running the suspected program in a virtual machine which is a separate operating system within the normal operating system. This area is also known as a sandbox, or quarantined environment that holds the virus safety. If the program performs any function normally associated with mal-ware or a virus, the operator is notified and the program gets quarantined.

The Cleaner runs on Windows 7, Vista, XP, and Windows Server 2003/2008 O/Ss. Obviously this information is from an old article and written towards the 2011 version. I Googled the 2016 edition, and came up with this. The program installs TCActive! Startup with the filename tcap.exe and a Cleaner Helper service with mhelper.exe filename. The article states that both files are necessary to remove rootkit malware.

The Cleaner 2011 provides the following features and options for Windows computers:

• Real-time protection against Trojans and other types of malware via its TCActive! module.

• On-demand scanner with quick, custom and full system scans. A context menu scanner is also available.

• ask Scheduler to scan and update the anti-Trojan program.

• Quarantine and Exclusion Manager.

• Drag and drop files to scan. Note that this feature does not work if the user account control (UAC) in Vista or Windows 7 is enabled.

• Option to adjust the heuristic detection from paranoid to relaxed mode.

• Activity log that you can view, save or clear.

• Send detected or suspicious files to Moosoft for analysis.

• Automatic Update for database of malware, registry, *FileSpect, files, deep scan, language and programs.

What is neat in using The Cleaner 2011 is you can actually navigate to any of its program options or tabs during a scan. There is also an option to pause, stop or resume a scan.

* FileSpect is an exclusive technology in The Cleaner 2011 to detect or inspect infected files or processes.

Security News. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2016, from http://www.pctools.com/security-news/heuristic-virus-definition/

The quick scan can be run and finish in seven minutes where as a full scan can be accomplished in thirty minutes or less. It uses 27 to 37 MB of memory during the scan. When 420 malware samples were loaded into a trial version of The Cleaner, 311 samples went undetected, however, the full version is said to be capable of discovering all viruses and is updated daily to find all the little nasties which are out there in the wild.

The Cleaner succeeds in detecting all active and running infections such as rootkits, rogueware and Trojans. Then when I scrolled down the same page of this article, the author says the removal engine failed to remove the rootkit infection. Go figure.

Needless to say, the next few questions or requirements require installing this package on my computer, and review the tests which were run, and do I like it? It’s my computer and I am not going to run anything on it that I don’t trust because one sentence says it removes everything, and the next line says it doesn’t. Sorry boss man, I’m not willing to stick my neck out for this.

Maybe someday when “Old Smokey” gets the best of me, I’ll blast him with this and see what happens. I’m sure that after last weekend, this time may be coming soon.

Well, that about sums this up. Time for my favorite TV show, “All about Homework”, and I get to be the star.

Until next time – “Happy researching”.

References:

The Cleaner Program Review. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2016, from http://www.brighthub.com/computing/smb-security/reviews/104454.aspx

Security News. (n.d.). Retrieved May 11, 2016, from http://www.pctools.com/security-news/heuristic-virus-definition/