TOPIC: How to stay safe from malware and exploits

Here's some tips that may save your bank account or computers performance.
Knowing your malware:
There are different categories of malware, all serving different purposes.
RAT:
Stands for "Remote administration tool/trojan". It is designed for a small amount of infected computers but allows an unprecedented ease of access and degree of control. From viewing your webcam and desktop to stealing your saved passwords, this nasty thing is designed for people who want to fuck with other people.

Shell:
A step up from a rat and a step back from ease of use, these are mainly designed to give access to 1 machine but you get full CMD/Bash control. From this you can do almost anything. Not really a threat, only used in Pentesting or infiltrating a network.
Botnet:
Similar to a rat but designed for something different. These bad-boys cost a lot and are designed for thousands of bots to be connected. They allow for the use of the bots in the following things: Password stealing, framing, and DDoS attacks.
Rootkit:
A very different piece of malware, that is designed to hide other malware, it does this through very complex methods and can make any AV or anything useless.

You can remove all but the rootkit with sort of ease. If the malware is not hidden by a rootkit then you can scan with an AV, this is not gonna do much if they are competent but It can help in some situations. Without a proper knowledge of malware there is no real way to do this with ease. I suggest contacting someone in the whitehat section of any computer security forum to help you remove it

Exploits and how they effect you
Exploits are holes in security that allow people to do things. A very sought after exploit is any browser RCE (Remote code execution) exploit. These allow the person to run code on your machine without your knowledge if you visit their site. A good way to bypass all of this is to make sure ALL your software is up to date, including windows. This makes it harder for them to do anything against it.

Trusting your AntiVirus:
Simple, don't trust it. Here is a link to a virus scan of a RAT
There is only one that picks it up and it's not even getting the right idea. DR Web is a boss and you should use that, but it is clear that it's tricking majority of Anti Viruses.
If you need help removing anything just ask.