Malicious Software Removal Tool

The Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool (English Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, short MRI or MSRT ) is a software by Microsoft to validate Windows PCs to certain malicious programs. As of June 2013 the operating systems Windows XP, Vista, 7, Server 2003 and Server 2008 are supported. For Windows 2000, the program is no longer offered through Windows Update since 13 July 2010, the last working version of the program is 4:20 from May 2013.

Function

In contrast to anti -virus programs, the Microsoft tool only remove active malware and prevent not their implantation into the system. Microsoft notes that it can not be a replacement for an antivirus program.

A new version of the program is usually published every second Tuesday of the month ( the Day Patch from Microsoft), in special cases, there are also unscheduled updates. The program is available through Automatic Updates, Windows Update or manually download from the Microsoft website. It is intended for home users and professional users.

The reasons why the tool is available for free is not to compete with popular antivirus engines, Microsoft itself is one of:

• The program offers no protection against the intrusion of viruses and other malicious software, only when these have settled in specific locations on the computer, they can be detected and removed by the MSRT, but only if they are currently active.
• It specializes in identifying some specific, prevalent, but difficult to remove computer worms, Trojan horses and viruses. A list of the fighting of the MSRT family of malware has been released by Microsoft.
• The period of one month until the next update is too long for the fight against new viruses. Integrated anti-virus programs are usually updated automatically every day or more often over the Internet. The MSRT supported anti-virus programs in the fight against malware that could be of those not detected or removed.
• The program normally does not investigate the whole computer, just the usual suspect places. Only when called by the user can also set a " full scan ".

Because some malware prevents automatic updates of Windows, when suspected of being infected a run with the manually downloaded the MSRT can be a first step.

For detection of malicious software, or when an error occurs during the execution of a report is sent to Microsoft. Here, according to Microsoft, no data is sent, allow conclusions on the computer or the user. From the data reported statistics on the spread of certain families of malware are created and the tool improved. The reporting component of the tool can be turned off.

History

The Malicious Software Removal Tool was first published on January 13, 2005 by Microsoft for the then current Windows versions Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 in 24 languages. In the first 15 months after the release of the program has been installed on 270 million computers. From the feedback to Microsoft indicates that the tool has 16 million worms, Trojans and viruses are removed at this time by 5.7 million individual computers. 3.7 million computers were infected with Trojans, they set in this period the largest share of malware dar. That in relation to the studied computers relatively little malware has been removed, is that the tool is specialized to certain categories of malware and usually in addition to anti -virus programs malicious software removed. The distribution of certain widespread malware families went during the period of the publication of the tools in early 2005 until March 2006 significantly, with some of them even by 75 percent.

On 19 May 2009, Microsoft released a statistic that emerged from that among the ten most common malware families ( "Top Ten" ) were six programs that could spy on passwords and bank data on computers. 859 842 computer were frees up the time of reporting by the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool from these programs. Some computers were attacked by more of these six programs, like working, but less common malicious software was not included in the statistics.