Policy Regarding the Posting of Jotti/Virus Total Results

[LowWaterMark]

It is a policy here at Wilders Security Forums that scan results from services such as Jotti, Virus Total or similar websites, should not be posted unless requested by a forum staff member.

Too frequently people go out and find some piece of malware, upload it to one of those services, then based upon the results displayed, start a thread here to either praise or bash the anti-virus scanners involved.

Such results are for the most part meaningless. There are always questions about whether the sample was functional, truly malicious or corrupted in some way. Also of concern is whether the scanner at the service was configured properly, up to date, using the current engine on the right OS platform, was overloaded or not, and so on.

The detection of any one particular sample at some moment in time on a shared service platform is not really the way any anti-virus should be judged for overall performance. It's the record of detection over the long term in the real world and under real PC usage conditions that is important.

Threads like that, showing a screen shot or results of a specific detection made by one or more anti-virus products, and showing other products missing the sample, are not of any real value. Files can be found that any AV will get a hit on and others will miss. We could post threads like that, with or without Jotti or VirusTotal results included, all day long and still be none the wiser for it.

As noted in some past removal notices, those type threads are neither support issues or helpful. If and when the vendors receive such samples, they will act on them according to the priority they deem necessary. Some will add detection and some won't. We won't debate the merits of their sample by sample decisions in such threads here at Wilders Security.

- Also please note that uploading a file to such a service does not make someone a malware analyst. See this topic for more about that.

____________________