Brendan Smith

Brendan Smith has spent over 15 years knee-deep in cybersecurity, chasing down malware from the gritty reverse-engineering of old-school trojans all the way to wrangling full-blown incident responses for small-to-medium businesses that couldn’t afford a full-blown breach. Over at Gridinsoft, he’s the guy piecing together those double-checked guides on nasty stuff like AsyncRAT, a remote access tool used in malware campaigns—helping readers make sense of the threat and work through cleanup without the extra headache.
Cybersecurity Analyst
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726 Articles

Hommy Ransomware: .hommy File Recovery Guide

Hommy ransomware adds the .hommy extension and leaves +README-WARNING+.txt. Isolate the PC,…

Brendan Smith

RealtekHD taskhostw.exe AutoIt Error Cleanup

Seeing an AutoIt error from RealtekHD taskhostw.exe? Line 21219 or another line…

Brendan Smith

ML/Augur Alert: False Positive or Malware?

ESET ML/Augur alert on an Edge update, installer, or unknown EXE? Learn…

Brendan Smith

Win32:Malware-gen / Other:Malware-gen: False Positive or Malware?

Seeing Win32:Malware-gen or Other:Malware-gen on cmd.exe or another file? Learn when it…

Brendan Smith

CryptoBandits.A USB Clipper

Microsoft reports CryptoBandits, a USB-spread crypto clipper. Check .lnk shortcuts, ugate.exe, localhost:9050,…

Brendan Smith

Tiflux RMM Malware: Unauthorized Remote Access Cleanup

Unexpected Tiflux RMM after a service-agreement email can mean unauthorized remote access.…

Brendan Smith

RuntimesHost.exe Virus Cleanup

Found RuntimesHost.exe, node.exe, or a RuntimesHost_user task? Learn what it means, how…

Brendan Smith

Trojan:MSIL/Heracles: Defender Alert and Cleanup

Seeing Trojan:MSIL/Heracles or a Heracles !MTB variant in Microsoft Defender? Check the…

Brendan Smith

Gen:Variant Detection: False Positive or Malware?

Gen:Variant alerts from Bitdefender, Emsisoft, and related engines need source, path, signature,…

Brendan Smith

Clean Scan Popups

Windows Defender says no threats found but threat popups keep appearing? Separate…

Brendan Smith

Trojan:Win32/Caynamer.A!ml: False Positive or Malware?

Seeing Trojan:Win32/Caynamer.A!ml in Microsoft Defender? Learn when to remove it, when a…

Brendan Smith

Win32:Evo-gen[Trj]: False Positive or Malware?

Win32:Evo-gen[Trj] is an Avast/AVG heuristic alert. Learn when it is likely a…

Brendan Smith

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