can a virus still b intact even after all the formatting etc?

[Kumoko]

i think some virus can b completely remove by just doing that but out of curiosity is it possible

[Randy Marsh]

It’s possible, I bet it’s rare though.

[_I_]

depends on what kind of virus it was
some hide in other partitions, (most default have 3, os, recover, boot)
if you only format one of them it can remain
or if its a bad/sneaky one, it can hide in the partition table, or usb stick or other locations

there are other places too, if it writes to bios, or some have been infecting routers or other network gear (smart switch)
but viruses like that are extremely rare as they need to be written for specific hardware

most of what is considered a virus now is really malware/ransomware or unwanted uninstallable software

[mtono]

_I_ původně napsal:

depends on what kind of virus it was
some hide in other partitions, (most default have 3, os, recover, boot)
if you only format one of them it can remain
or if its a bad/sneaky one, it can hide in the partition table, or usb stick or other locations

there are other places too, if it writes to bios, or some have been infecting routers or other network gear (smart switch)
but viruses like that are extremely rare as they need to be written for specific hardware

most of what is considered a virus now is really malware/ransomware or unwanted uninstallable software

i think so, too. to get rid of virus totally and surley one has to throw away his pc^^

[Washell]

Assuming you start from a clean boot device, virtually every virus will be gone. Assume any sticks and external drives you used are infected too, so scan those before using them again.

[L37]

Depends on what you mean by "formatting".
For example windows itself is garbage enough to hide small "reserved" partitions it creates for whatever reason (even on non-system drives) from user even in "disk management", and protect them from being deleted even by commandline tools (the only way to get rid of it is booting into some linux live cd and deleting it from there)... and then still allow wrighting to them with a bit of fiddling... hiding stuff there is pretty trivial, with 99% of the work already done by microsoft.
So if you just right click on disk and choose format, or you do the same in windows installer, there are a lot of very simple ways virus can survive. Even without bothering with stuff like wrighting itself into uefi and such...

[Out Of Bubblegum]

I looked for a tool once that would really wipe an entire drive. The boot sectors and all. Everything. I did not find one. Is there a way?

[Overseer]

Yes. For example the firmware of devices has become more and more a target of hackers. Even CPUs can end up with persistent malicious code nowadays. Its really difficult to trust a heavily infected system.
But i would't worry too much about it.

[L37]

Out Of Bubblegum původně napsal:

I looked for a tool once that would really wipe an entire drive. The boot sectors and all. Everything. I did not find one. Is there a way?

Boot any linux live cd and do
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX
where X is the letter representing your hard drive. You can use lsscsi or lsblk to learn which hdd is which letter.
Be carefull as it will overwrite whole hdd with zeros and any data will be unrecoverable.
After waiting for it to finish you will get hdd entirely overwritten with zeros, each sector. Which will mean no partition table, no partitions, etc. You will then have to create new partition table, partition(s) and filesystem(s).

[Out Of Bubblegum]

Just throwing this out for thought. I bought something like this:
https://www.newegg.com/p/2WA-006P-00008?Description=ssd%20dock%20internal&cm_re=ssd_dock_internal-_-9SIABMK5G44421-_-Product

I bought a few new SSD drives and installed Windows on them from a distribution CD. I put just one into the PC at a time. One just does banking and other critical things, like my 401K. A different one does nothing but on-line purchases and Gmail, etc. A third one is for gaming. For gaming, I put a second disk in to increase capacity. I use a few cheap small USB to store data from the banking disk. Those never go into any other PC. Yes, I am over paranoid. :)

[emoticorpse]

Anything is possible really. You might as well ask "is it possible to get a virus without even clicking anything" and the answer would be yes. Not sure if your remember but that's what happened with the blaster worm.

[rallicknom]

Seems to me that there is no 100% security as long as you have an internet connection.

[L37]

Out Of Bubblegum původně napsal:

Just throwing this out for thought. I bought something like this:
https://www.newegg.com/p/2WA-006P-00008?Description=ssd%20dock%20internal&cm_re=ssd_dock_internal-_-9SIABMK5G44421-_-Product

I bought a few new SSD drives and installed Windows on them from a distribution CD. I put just one into the PC at a time. One just does banking and other critical things, like my 401K. A different one does nothing but on-line purchases and Gmail, etc. A third one is for gaming. For gaming, I put a second disk in to increase capacity. I use a few cheap small USB to store data from the banking disk. Those never go into any other PC. Yes, I am over paranoid. :)

If you want to be really paranoid use some crazy OS like OpenBSD for doing stuff online. Not only it is pretty secure, but it is also extremely uncommon => not really targeted by any malware. And since you do not need anything apart from browser for this no compatibility issues and such.

[Overseer]

I mean you could also use something like a custom Raspberry Pi to do online banking with Linux. Or use a read only disc for a Linux Live session, ensuring no malware ever writes data.

[Out Of Bubblegum]

These 2 ideas are both true. But too much new learning to do.

[L37]

Out Of Bubblegum původně napsal:

These 2 ideas are both true. But too much new learning to do.

Not really.
For games it is problematic, but for browsing the web there is near-zero difference between different OS. You get exactly the same browser, same general UI, as long as you do not intend to play games, run some special software or do some advanced stuff you are unlikely to bump into any differences at all.