Ask our Principal Software Developer anything

Hi Mr. Cristian AMARIE,

can you tell me if the free version of Bitdefender, which is arousing great interest, will be implemented with some other features? Or whether some advanced security features will be made available and activated?

Surely Bitdefender Free would give the competition a lot of trouble and increase your user base which would allow, through the various user feedbacks, to also reinforce the defense of paid solutions.

Also it would be nice and interesting to equip the TrafficLight extension with a good AdBlocker.

Thank you.

Greetings.

Nunzio d'Abbruzzo.

Plainswalker7

I need help. In April of this year I purchased the Total Security Pkg from BitDefender. This week I was having my computer run through the diagnostic clinic at Office Max. They say that I have 6 viruses and want $99 to take them off. Shouldn't BitDefender have blocked those viruses? Is there a way to get BitDefender to take them off for me? Also have another question. How do I contact the company to ask questions? This was the only place I could find.

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/1733/

@Plainswalker7

Hello.

First, take screenshot(s) of the issue,

create a log file on your Windows device using Bitdefender Support Tool, by following these steps:

and

create a log file on your Windows device using BDsysLog, by following these steps:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/1922/

Next, contact Bitdefender Consumer Support by e-mail:

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/91918/bitdefender-websites-and-bitdefender-consumer-support-contacts

with short description of the issue.

After that, you will get an automated reply by the Bitdefender Customer Care Team, with your ticket number.

Now, in reply to that automated reply, you can send the screenshot(s) you already took and the log files you already created in the first step.

Since you are all done, just wait for the support engineers to investigate your issue and find a solution to fix the issue.

Remember that the screenshot(s) and the log files will help a lot to the support engineers for better and faster investigation on your issue and finding a solution.

Regards.

There are a number of proposals for making few more things available, but I cannot say for sure when (and if) such features will make it into the free version.

Also it would be nice and interesting to equip the TrafficLight extension with a good AdBlocker.

You can always try the free trial of Total Security, which contains quite a number of privacy-oriented features - Anti-Tracker which integrates with major browsers, Safepay for a completely isolated environment and VPN. An adblocker, while making website visit more easier, is exactly not a security feature. But point taken.

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/314196#Comment_314196

Ok. Thanks so much!😃

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/92021/bitdefender-free-blocks-malware-but-doesnt-always-quarantine-it#latest

Good morning mr. Cristian AMARIE,

i ask you to take a look at my following posts which I think will be useful in improving Bitdefender's protection:

Bitdefender Free - Blocks malware but doesn't always quarantine it:

Bitdefender Free (new version) - suggested improvements:

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/313556#Comment_313556

Thank you.

Hello, Mr. Amarie.

Can you tell us what is your opinion on the future of malware, in the means of new malware trends and new malware attacks, and will be the malware of the future independent and adaptable, something like AI-driven malware?

Thank you very much for your answer.

Kind regards.

@Gjoksi

I think the malware has diverged in the last years (and take these lines more as a personal consideration, being involved in some areas of security but less in others). If initially there were college kids that split files in half just for fun, today malware specializes, much like various gangs specializes (some guys are loan sharks, others steal identities and money, others spam/fishing and so on). There is state-sponsored malware; various groups more or less sponsored by other organizations; small timers; home loners; copy pasters - and I can go on for a while.

What I can say is, from my (technical) point of view, is that the weakest link is still the user. Social engineering, imperative emails asking for immediate passwords reset, applications not updated/patched, misconfigurations, and the fact the regular user should not be always alert - these are, for a consumer user, the main troubles. This is why we stress this part to the user and various Bitdefender products scan regularly for such indicators that might lead to trouble.

If some obscure group makes a DNS flood attack on some ISP we might not be able to post or watch movies for several hours, or perhaps a day, but not much else happens at home - while receiving an extortion email, click-me-you-will-see-beautiful-******-ladies links, or having an unpatched web browser and visiting websites with dynamic content posted by all sorts of people - that is the immediate danger.

Malware trends - most likely there are tools, proof of concepts, researchers and alikes working around the clock to employ every exotic form of technology, including AI, adaptability, machine learning, or other elaborate forms of saying the code behind is also taking decisions based on various criteria, and not doing the same thing over and over again. Most likely these technologies are used to analyze sample user data uploaded from malware, establishing a some kind of profile and devising a secondary set of attacks based on what the analysis produced, and I think this is where ML/AI is most involved: data analysis.

After all, a malware can do only a small set of effects: destroy, collect, trick the user to do an action (or, in more elaborate forms, trick the user to create the conditions for subsequent actions), or be itself a host for other dedicated malware by downloading another attack vectors or creating intentional vulnerabilities. I'm sure all these technologies and more are used on the backend - everyone having customers (willing or not) does analyze them - but less so on the end device.

But on the end-user device, I'm a bit conservative to say if such complex technologies will be used on a large scale. Not for other reason, but the end user does not worth the effort to employ tactics and means too consuming. Although the real world does have (even very old) examples that might contradict me - I'm thinking on one of the oldest malware known, Tremor (first spotted in 1993), which was - at that time - polymorphic, self-modifying, deciding behavior depending on environment, spreading using another executables and a lot of other intelligent techniques - and that was like a lifetime ago before ... almost anything.

On the business side, I'm afraid I'm not too qualified to comment. I suppose malware is somewhat similar in the techniques with what affects the end-user, only with more emphasis on misconfigurations, user rights and unauthorized data access. Here AI techniques are probably more often involved, reward being much higher for a business malware. But even so, in the end, irrespective of technique, malware is looking for the same vulnerable things: unpatched software, weak passwords, users inserting USB devices in all sorts of places etc.

@camarie

Thank you very much for your detailed answer.

Cheers.

Alexandru_BD

@mrmirakhur if you are not here, you are missing out 😀

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/314251#Comment_314251

Very interesting.🙂

Mike_BD

Flex, @mrmirakhur where are you?! :)

Flexx

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/314254#Comment_314254

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/314269#Comment_314269

@mrmirakhur is trying to cope up with insomnia 😅

While I guess I had a pm with @camarie before and I guess he deals with windows software developement, so will try to ask some of the questions related to windows software and also some related to non windows product if it can be conveyed to the relevant department.

1) I personally find the scanning speed of bitdefender for windows to be slow. Here is the thing, I have checked on the products like emsisoft & escan which utilize bitdefender signature based engine as their secondary engine. I know there are many other antimalware products using the bitdefender signature based engine but talking specifically about emsisoft & escan with the compressed/ zip file scan enabled, I was surprised by the way escan & emsisoft performed.

Talking specifically about escan and comparing it with bitdefender, i had and still have a collection of about more than 50000 malware samples. In this case I will take an example of lets say 10000 malware samples, if bitdefender takes let say about 30-40 minutes to delete or disinfect the malware files, escan will only take 10-15 minutes, despite escan using bitdefender signature based engine as its secondary engine and we know if a product is using more than one signature based engine it will take more time to scan, but it amazes me how fast escan performs the requested actions.

I would request you to kindly take around 10000 malicious samples from malware researchers and compare the scanning speed between both escan and bitdefender product.

2) While we know bitdefender is set to auto protect the user and delete a particular file if it is not disinfected, but there should be an option where only user gets to choose whether he wants to delete all the files or disinfect the files which can be disinfected and then delete the rest of the files.

Currently bitdefender performs automatic disinfection and then displays result and if any file is not been able to be disinfected it displays a scan result and ask for manual deletion of those files.

But here is the thing, let say if I am a malware tester and I have around 10000 malware samples and I want to see as to how many samples does bitdefender detect. So if I will run a contextual scan on the folder containing the samples, it will always try to disinfect the file and if they are not disinfected they will be deleted.

But if bitdefender is disinfecting some files from the list of those 10000 files, I will not come to know which file has bitdefender disinfected until I will check the log and hence I will assume that the files that are remaining in the folder are not at all detected by bitdefender and I will end sending both the undetected files as well as the disinfected files to the malware researchers which will consume a lot of their time.

Resolution would be very easy.

Provide user with 2 option, by default let bitdefender disinfect the files and delete the files which are not disinfected and still malicious. The second option can be let user run a scan and bitdefender only shows the file detected but does not perform any disinfection or deletion on that. When the scan gets completed, a windows should be displayed where a user can have option if he wants to completely delete all the malicious files even the ones which can be disinfected. This will make it easier for malware hunters like us and also lower the workload on bitdefender malware researchers by not sending them the file that bitdefender has already disinfected.

3) Can the developers try to recheck on the current gui of bitdefender and if possible bring back the old gui of the version 2017/2018 in which there was an amazing dark colour dashboard with the greecheck mark and the green circles glowing & fading out. It looked amazing.

4) This is related to mobile security for android and I have been trying very very hard to get this thing implemented from last 3-4 years but the development team is not approving this.

It's again related to testing of android malware, suppose I have a list of let say 10000 android malware and I am scanning it with bitdefender mobile security for android, and let say the result shows 8000 files to be malicious. Now, in order to remove those apk setup packages from my device I will have to click on the delete option one by one for each file. I am really unable to understand why is the development team not able to implement a delete all option so that in one click all the 8000 files that were detected will get deleted instead of me manually clicking delete against each apk setup package.

I have around more than 30000 samples of android malwares but I did not perform a complete scan with bitdefender mobile security for android because I know I will be wasting my time because even if bitdefender will detect some files I will still have to manually remove the detected files one by one which will take days to complete.

A simple delete all detected files is not at all hard to implement. It is my humble request to introduce this, if possible please share this with the senior developer for android product.

AS OF NOW I HAVE ONLY THESE THINGS TO SAY, REST ALL I THINK IS PERFECT. IF I EVER COME ACROSS ANY OTHER SUGGESTION OR IMPROVEMENT I WILL UPDATE THIS POST.

Regards

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/93017/bdservicehost-bitdefender-virus-shield-uses-50-of-the-hd-after-every-windows-boot#latest

@camarie For some days this anomalous behavior of high hard disk use has been occurring when starting the PC for about 20 minutes ... Can you tell us something? Will the problem be solved?

@Nunzio d'Abbruzzo I'm not sure what happens yet, but let's keep the issue in the corresponding thread.

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/314477#Comment_314477

@mrmirakhur Thank you for the comments. Quite a list, and the scanning part is not exactly my daily thing, but I'll try to address at least some of them.

First I want to let you know that all your comments and suggestions were made available to the team. I'm confident we will look into them. While I cannot say at this time what and when we can pick up, we will discuss all of them shortly.

Now getting into your list. Remember there are zones where I am not writing code and/or I am not directly implicated, so please take what follows as my personal view, and at times not necessarily the best one.

I personally find the scanning speed of bitdefender for windows to be slow.

That depends on many factors, but mainly on how the scan is performed. The number of options and depth is quite large, and to compare two products' scan when one is using a handful of flags and the other a lot more will obviously make the first faster; add to this the tradeoffs picked on by various products (how much memory it consumes, if there are CPU/RAM limits etc). That being said, since it's not my dev area, I forwarded this observation to those knowing in detail what happens.

[...] there should be an option where only user gets to choose whether he wants to delete all the files or disinfect the files [...]

It looks like a reasonable proposal. But, again, there is a tradeoff. You are a malware researcher, which places you in a small class of power user, and I understand the need for various touches to help you doing your job. On the other hand, this is a consumer product, which means the number of options, while needed, has to be kept in check, otherwise what looks for your natural and helpful might end up as overwhelming and unnecessary complicated for the other 99%.

[...] Resolution would be very easy. [...]

It might look this way, but it never is. A list with 10k files introduces a slew of other complications - think virtual lists, pagination; do we keep all the items and the associated data - persistent or not - in memory? how the scrolling behaves? do we risk UI freeze? should we use recordsets? Should we make it paginated? should we implement a filtering, combined with exclusions operators? And the possibilities of ending up with a mini-Excel just for one feature is quickly adding up.

Think on a web page with 10 or 10000 DIV elements inside: the 10k one surely pushes the DOM limits. Or opening Windows Explorer in a folder with 10k files; one quickly notice what happens when opening a directory containing a large Git repository, for example.

Don't get me wrong, I would like to have a full search feature, filtering and composing operations, even a scripting feature. But a consumer product have to be simple, and the one-size-fits-all almost never works unless one is targeting a very specific set of users.

Can the developers try to recheck on the current gui of bitdefender and if possible bring back the old gui of the version 2017/2018

Well, it's not up the developers - we just implement the UI. That being said, in the Settings page there is the Dark Mode which is similar, with a slightly different theme. Bringing back an old GUI might send a mixed message to the users, but in this matter I am preferring my UI to stay the same for years, the GUI has to evolve as well. The rule of thumb here is not easy to follow - while a product obviously needs to have its own identity, it also needs to integrate with an existing operating system.

[...] mobile security for android and I have been trying very very hard to get this thing implemented from last 3-4 years but the development team is not approving this [...]

I am not in touch with the Android team, so I cannot speak for their to-do list. What I can think is again related with what I said above: the product is targeted for users dealing with malware as it comes, one, perhaps a handful at a time, but not thousands. While I understand your use case, as a researcher, it is vastly different than a regular user one and needs available editing tools to perform needed actions, such a feature will probably will not be easily implemented, simply because IMHO its place looks more in a some form of mini-IDE/advanced editor rather than a security product.

Regards,

Cristian

Flexx

Thank you @camarie for your response. Appreciated.

Regards

@camarie if you succeed with the next update, fix the bugs of the USB On Demand Scan not working and also the Safe Search not working with Google.

Thank you! 🙂

@camarie why do the Bitdefender AVs use a lot of RAM even at "idle"? Have you ever thought about reducing the percentage of RAM usage? For the latest generation PC, having 8GB of RAM or even more than 8GB the problem does not arise, but PC with lower RAM becomes a little more critical.

Thank you.🙂

Ausearch

I recently received two emails (on gmail) that appeared to be from people I know: one from my brother and the other from an old acquaintance from school (50+ years ago). Both carried a lead-in that enticed me to click on them. Anyway, when I clicked on them I was taken to advertising for miraculous gummies. Supposedly got unanamous support from "Shark Tank." When I checked the senders' addresses they were NOT the addresses they were supposed to be.

So someone has connected me to these senders and sussed out an event I would be interested in.

I ran a full Bitdefender scan which checked over 2 Million files and turned up nothing suspicious.

Maybe this is something you might want alert your subscribers about.

if you succeed with the next update, fix the bugs of the USB On Demand Scan not working and also the Safe Search not working with Google.

I'm not directly aware of the issues, but I'm pushing the questions to the team. Can you elaborate a little on each of them (what is not working, more precisely?).

why do the Bitdefender AVs use a lot of RAM even at "idle"?

Usually these are automated, scheduled things (things like "check if we need to display an alert", "check if vulnerabilities are present"), update checks, and OS detections triggering various routines (i.e. a new device has connected to USB, a new device appeared on the network etc.). So even if, for example, your PC is doing nothing but someone connects to the same WiFi network you are connected to, an entire array of things might be activated (do we know this device? is it running a known OS? it is a device running a Bitdefender product? etc etc etc). And in top of that, the entire infrastructure of an AV (which is really a suite of executables, engines, scanners etc.) gets complex very quickly because of the myriad of things it implements and being in constant connection with the OS. It's not like a paused game, that I can tell.

Have you ever thought about reducing the percentage of RAM usage? For the latest generation PC, having 8GB of RAM or even more than 8GB the problem does not arise, but PC with lower RAM becomes a little more critical.

We do, all the time, but we can do little when the OS requirements moves past 8 GB. Think Windows 7 which had no troubles accommodating AV, Office, browsing, games etc. in this amount of RAM, which is mandatory now for a Windows 10 or 11 doing barely nothing. But point taken, I am thinking on some areas that might enjoy a recheck to make them lighter in terms of memory. At least for discrete tasks, such as vulnerability scan - when comes to Safepay, for example, which is an entire browser, is quite hard to squeeze memory when an entire browser is launched and the webpages are so consuming these days. It's a constant struggle, that much I can tell.

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/314871#Comment_314871

@Ausearch

I recently received two emails (on gmail) that appeared to be from people I know: [...]

I cannot help you much in this thread. I suggest you to post on a more dedicated section (mail, antispam etc.) to get replies that actually can address your specific issue.

Mike_BD

Great point. Which is why I'm stubbornly still using Windows 7 Ultimate on my home media PC, as my ancient configuration built on LGA775, with a quad intel 6600 and 8 GB of Ram accommodates , without sweating just a bit, everything that I need and runs absolutely flawless (w7, office, BD + VPN, a plethora of games, from FPV to simulators to strategy).

Fun fact: I've slotted in a new, faster SSD and I've installed W11 + office license (paid, ofc), and besides not recognizing my Auzentech Xplosion sound card, the EXACTLY same hardware barely catches its breath when multitasking. For 5 months now just sits idle , as my boot sequence remained on w7. I'll switch after hardware upgrade.

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/314868#Comment_314868

I noticed that if you insert a USB stick, even if you have the on-demand scan enabled, no scan request pop-up appears. If, on the other hand, real time protection is deactivated and a USB key is inserted, the scan request pop-up appears.

Followed up with the guys knowing more than me. I'm not sure how this is supposed to work (I suspect it is by design), but it doesn't hurt to recheck.

bluewill

@Bitdefender developers

I read that BD will stop providing antimalware support for Windows 7 on 14. january 2023. Does this mean, that only new features won't be implemented, or will Bitdefender suddenly stop providing even definition updates on Win 7 machines ?

Since I use BTS on Windows 8.1 (which is not a popular OS), I'd like to know, if for windows 8.1 we can also expect a 3 years time (2026), before you drop the support or do you have a shorter time in mind.

@bluewill I am not aware of a firm date to end support for Windows 7, nor Windows 8.1. Surely it will be announced on the product page (or maybe it was already and I missed that), but from where I stand, we are still supporting and testing Windows 7 at this time.

bluewill

@camarie

Hi,

this is the link to Bitdefender's announcement about Windows 7 support: "www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/32549"

The article says

"As of January 14th, 2020, Microsoft announced its end of support for Windows 7. The operating system accounts for an estimated 25% of used Windows desktop versions. ...

..... Bitdefender will continue to provide antimalware support to Windows 7 users for the next 36 months, until January 14th, 2023. "

So, does this Bitdefender's announcement still hold ? If so, windows 7 support should end in less than 5 months. Should this happen, will security definitions suddenly stop updating or will stop only version upgrades ?

I'm interested, if windows 8.1 will have the same 36 months extra period support (january 2026) or will it be shorter, being this OS much less popular than windows 7 (3% of total PCs).

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/2059/

@bluewill That looks true. But I would say Windows 7 will be supported a little longer, not for any other reasons but the number of users still running Win7. Anyways, I will ask the business guys and as soon as I have news I will get back.

The updates will probably not work anyways, since without two critical KBs (those related to TLS and new certificate signatures) nothing will work, and Windows Update on Win7 is dead as well.

About 8.1 I think it will depend on both time and user base. I will ask this as well.

Jorgen

how do I know if the webbprotection is on?

Alexandru_BD

Hello @Jorgen,

You can find detailed information regarding the web protection feature by clicking on the link below:

While connected, web protection should be displayed like this in the app:

Regards

JeremyC

Hello Christian,

I "fixed" the operating system vulnerability involving automatic login. I then observed the following behavior:

In windows settings -> Accounts -> Sign-on options I see red text at the top of the page that says "*Some of these settings are hidden or managed by your organization."

I could not find documentation on what the fix did, so I contacted support and asked what Bitdefender changed. I was told:

"in this case, through the Vulnerability module and through Bitdefender, those notifications are only informative and once you click on Fix, nothing is happening because Bitdefender does not have the necessary permissions to change such options"

I know that Bitdefender (and all antivirus) requires deep systems administrative access. Also, I can't imagine the product team would invest time in adding a fix button that does nothing. I really wanted to find the answer so:

1) I built a fresh machine and installed Bitdefender

2) I performed vulnerability scan

3) I used Regshot to capture registry state

4) I clicked fix

5) I used Regshot to capture registry state again and compare

6) I found Bitdefender added following keys:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\DisableAutomaticRestartSignOn: 0x00000001

HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\DisableAutomaticRestartSignOn: 0x00000001

Recommendations:

Someone work with leadership team to ensure support has the appropriate knowledge and skills to properly support the product that engineering has built

Product team should provide documentation on what "fix" does and ensure support team (and customers) have access to that information

A new feature to undo some of these fixes for low-risk vulnerabilities would be a "nice to have"

Personally, I think that Bitdefender is an awesome product! I just noticed a disconnect between engineering and support that, if fixed, would make the customer experience much better.

Thanks!

Jeremy

@JeremyC

[...] *Some of these settings are hidden or managed by your organization." [...]

This is displayed by Windows, not by us. It is an indication displayed for certain settings "this might be controlled by n outside admin". Usually this means the computer is joined to a domain (the story is far more complex, involving ActiveDirectory, Group Policy, the presence of certain tools such as Company Portal - or not etc). The documentation of MS itself is not generous as well.

It might be the case. Or Vulnerability can change the values, only to be rolled back or reinstated by an administrator ****** or tool in case the device is enrolled in an enterprise. Or indeed it might happen the value remains as set by the vulnerability - it really depends on what policies are present on that machine.

And the suggestion of be able to undo changes is really interesting. Perhaps also a possibility to ignore some of them by marking them as such and be able to re-bring them later into scan can be useful.

MengJi

Hi Mr. Cristian AMARIE：

I want to ask how long it will take for the simplified Chinese version of bdts to be launched. Many of our BD fans have waited so long that they no longer use BD's products. I hope BD's software developers can pay attention to the Chinese market. Thank you!

@MengJi I have to ask the management and the OEM guys, I am not aware of this. Will be back as soon as I know more.

Termite

Within the next week, I will be getting a new computer. Should I uninstall Bitdefender from this computer and reinstall it in the new comuter? I don't want to have the old computer listed as having one of my five units using the program.

@Termite If you plan to keep them both and you have free slots in your license, I am recommending to install Bitdefender on both computers. If you plan to exclude the old computer, then install Bitdefender on the newer one.