Could be. However, the point stands, you’re gonna get what you pay for in the end. Not trying to be a dick ofc, but that’s the reality.

There are some well performing options that are free, but they are limited, and not too common imo

If anyone does have some good options, feel free to share as I may be unaware of them and think learning about them would be neat

And you got what you paid for, no?

I believe there is a free version as well but don’t think just because you’re installing Linux that you’re somehow safer.

There was just a package that was essentially socially engineered into by a hacker, who then had full access to everyone’s shit.

All because a GitHub author was pressured into letting them contribute to code. Mac/Apple are no different and starting to be more and more vulnerable as the “security by obscurity” wears off.

Free tools are fine and well, but that stuff is done for free. Including maintainence and everything else. In times like these, ain’t nobody got time for that anymore. People need to make a living and you will see degradation in the products thusly

I’ll also toss this hat into the ring - sysmon this is essentially a logging tool thats a bit better/nicer than the windows default, and categorizes all logs into very neat buckets that will make watching out for strange shit much much easier.

Sysmon is part of the sysinternals suite (vetted by the community + microsoft, which is sayin somethin lol) and you can make use this as the config file to use (Uses industry-standard MITRE Att&ck framework) which you can then use to correlate to more threats/malware authors/malware artifacts if you really wanna get your hands dirty/have some fun

Windows defender also has an offline scan mode which may be of use here - hard to say, dunno if they ever dropped a rootkit or any other av-dodging/persistence mechanisms

Bitdefender usually goes on sale too - check for coupon codes, don’t pay full price. Plus you get like 5 devices with your license IIRC. Worth a shot

Here’s probably all the info you could ever need:

https://redcanary.com/blog/threat-intelligence/raspberry-robin/

Next, you need to get your systems scanned and cleaned. Malware bytes is likely enough, but I always recommend BitDefender. Their efficacy rates are always fantastic, and they have been leading the industry for several years now. Download the AV on a clean system, put on clean flash drive, and install that way.

Last, you’re gonna need to reset your passwords. Yes, I know that’s toxic af. But this is the reality and why we always need to be veeeery careful with what we do. This worm communicates with a c2 server which means it can update itself which makes detection hard, and it also means that, at one point it may have been spying on your activity (and it likely was if not continues to)

This stuff happens, don’t beat yourself up too much. Live and learn

Here the funny part, google knew this shit would happen. How you ask? Well, see google has had this problem for a long time.

When google first came out, there was all sorts of techniques you could use to boost your PageRank. Google had to tweak and tweak and tweak to fix it so that nazi sites would not come up when you looked up Jewish holocaust memorial museums for example.

Seems they’ve learned nothing. And yet they’re still one of the biggest tech companies in the world.

Scary. Let’s add AI to the mix now.

Androids statistically are higher in exploits, if you’re worried about privacy like I was, moving away from google entirely and all their code is probably best

You can only do so much to secure your account. Everything else is in the hands of the developers. I’m not really understanding.

Can you specifically say what your end goal is and what you want to avoid?

You mention privacy concerns, then population problems, but then ask about security - just looking for something more concrete ig would help me help you

I work in cybersec - I’m not going to speak for all businesses or individuals but I will give you my perspective.

Sometimes we need to see browser history to help with timeline correlation, it’s mainly to see “how did this file get here, was it downloaded etc.

Sometimes the investigators need to check out the things they need to check out, BUT

BUT

It needs to be done precisely and sparingly where needed only. This means instead of going through the entire history file, or doing unrelated correlation work (spying on you without cause) you are going to only grab specific timeframes from things you suspect explicitly to prevent any overreach. It’s a tricky balance to hold but also why it’s so important for people in tech to be privacy advocates as well.

There’s a difference between searching for answers to a problem that arose and looking for/predicting problems (thought crime detected!)

Yep exactly, a single point of failure that also can’t be replaced

Forget about privacy, this is just fucking dumb

One point of failure that can’t be replaced if stolen?

This won’t ever take off, and will most definitely die out quickly in favor of literally any other technique including just embedding an nfc chip and battery to your palm surgically. Which I probably still wouldn’t be thrilled about but

A true hacker right here, talk about being a skid 😂