True, we all agree that the name "McAfee" is now more linked to media scandals and outrageous statements than to security solutions, but Intel's people are doing everything they can to avoid bad press while also offering users free resources. That's how we find Stinger, a portable scanner that seeks to complement traditional antiviruses, focusing its efforts on a shorter list of viruses and some ransomware variants.
A company with a rocky reputation
Once a user picks a security solution and concludes it's doing its job correctly, it's very hard to change their mind. In the past we've seen mistakes and carelessness from certain developers that almost ruined the reputation of their products, but most competitors have an impeccable track record. The case of McAfee is... very particular. Its founder, the eccentric John McAfee, left the company seven years after creating it, and the surname remained floating almost as a synonym for antivirus. Over time, McAfee suffered a fate similar to Symantec's: A mix of "feature creep", extreme dependence on the corporate market, and lack of responses to the advance of free antiviruses placed McAfee on a much lower plane. Even so, Intel paid almost eight billion dollars for McAfee, and the long-term plan is to turn those resources into "Intel Security", where we can already find several free tools, among which Stinger stands out.
Stinger in action
Its official page makes it clear from the start: Stinger does not seek to replace the antivirus that the user has chosen, but rather to serve as a complement. Each new version of Stinger incorporates detection signatures for very specific types of malware, with a certain emphasis on ransomware. Depending on the type of threat, Stinger can repair, delete, rename the infected file (to limit its impact), or simply note its existence in the general report, which is saved to the Windows desktop in HTML format. Among its advanced options, there is a sensitivity adjuster for the detection engine. The factory option is "Medium", and although it's very easy to set it to the maximum, the possibility of a false positive becomes larger.
At this time, Stinger's size is about 15 megabytes, and since it doesn't require a formal installation, it can be run directly from a USB drive. Now, Stinger is not free of problems. The scanner adds a service to Windows called "McAfee Validation Trust Protection Service", which is not harmful, however, it installs without the user's consent. The simplest way to remove it is to use McAfee's official tool, MCPR, which can be downloaded from here.
In summary: Stinger works quite well, but I recommend it only for advanced infection cases that have already managed to compromise the main antivirus (in one way or another).
