Digital Defender

Sure. That's true. But really, my impression and posting was only based on loading the software and running i for about a half hour or so with the links I used. Overall, my FIRST impression on how it felt on the system, was light.

I've tried other programs and you can immediately feel it heavy on the system.

 

I've now tested Digital Defender and here's my non-professional review;

Version 2.1.31 of Digital Defender was tested. After installation, which was quick and easy, a 61 mb update was downloaded and installed. The update was
downloaded at speeds above 2 MB/s. The installation of the update was very quick.

After launching Chrome.exe, Word 2007, Excel 2007 & Adobe Photoshop CS 4, I found DD (Digital Defender) to be very smooth. Compared to a system without any resident anti-malware software, there was no noticeable difference in terms of responsiveness.

I tested DD against 805 malware samples collected in the last month. First off, DD did an on-demand scan on the folder with samples in it. After this scan based on signatures, 138 samples were left (82,9% detection rate). Of these 138 samples, most were rouge softwares. On these, an on-execution test was conducted using a script I made. DD detected and prevented infection from 41 of the 138 remaining samples, leaving 97 undetected samples. The 41 samples detected and prevented were detected by generic (heuristic) signatures. There was no heuristic indicator, only generic references. Out of the total 805 malware samples, DD detected, prevented and cleaned 708 samples. This means that DD had a 88% detection and prevention rate. Bare in mind that most of the missed samples were rouge/fake software. This is a group of malware most of the other vendors aren't very good at detecting either.

Overall, DD did surprisingly well. It was very lightweight. It performed good against most malware types. Its weak point was the rouge/fake softwares. This is however typical for all vendors out there.

/G

 

Thanks shadek Good review

 

This is something I can never understand: why aren't most AVs that good at detecting rogues and fake malware? DD is a good find by TheIgster, and I also think it is very light on resources, although I'd like to see it tested by AV Comparatives.

 

Thanks Shadek...good review.

Well, are they really that harmful, other than installing something? Most AV's I test don't stop something from installing if it isn't doing something it shouldn't be doing on the system. That's what seems to happen in most cases with these. It's just an install. The programs don't really do anything from what I've seen.

 

Rouge AVs usually avoid heuristic detection because they are so similar to legit software applications. Almost the only way to stop these rouges are with signatures. As thousands of malwares are released each day, it's hard for the AV vendors to keep up.

 

Good review shadek. That would have taken you a fair amount of time, same with TheIgster. Maybe someone from DD can stop by, or update us on where their product is heading, new releases etc.

Or maybe not.

 

+1

 

I am now trying DD as a resident anti-malware on my real desktop computer. I'm going to leave it there and decide whether it's a keeper or not. The price is very reasonable, if the PRO version really is needed.

 

I'm glad people have found interest in this thread. That's one of the great things about this forum. Good stuff. Let us know how it goes Shadek.

 

Kerry Reid from DD is already among us.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1654479&postcount=78

Anyone may want to PM him..

 

Does DD have its own engine on top of VirusBuster or just VirusBuster?

 

A 61 meg siggy base against a 6 meg siggy database:

One sample that drops heaps which aren't very well known over at VT atm including the rogue Antivirus Scan .

your_exe.exe - 8/43 - MD5 : 6b6a3cff18288fb9538ba9e8baefb446

 

Name: Trace.Registry.WinAntiVirus Pro 2005!A2

Emsisoft Emergency Kit False Positive

Reg Key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

 

Installed, tried for a few hours and good first impression, but started slowing down in a terrible way. Uninstalled and won't be using it again.

 

Hi,

Technophobe alert.

I installed digital defender on my PC a year or so ago ... it slowed down my machine so I uninstalled it - or so I thought.
I went to reinstall it today and it says it's already installed.

My security settings are saying that 'digital defender is off or uninstalled' and I can't see anything for dd in the control panel.

How can I switch it back on?!??

 

That statement may be true for some people depending on the software they have on their system and the settings they have Prevx set to. You can't say that as a general rule for everyone. I myself have Prevx installed, but unfortunately can't agree with your statement in my case as I have yet to experience "a lot" of FPs.

This, of course, could apply to a number of other vendors. Time and again, you'll see people here claiming X product has a FP detection with Y vendor. Those same people then go on to slate that product for having too many FPs. At same time, so many other users don't with the same vendor. It is all relative to what one has on their system and at what settings they have their anti-malware program set to. Often lowering protection levels resolves the issue, but if anything is indeed a FP, at least report it to the vendor.

 

This is true, likewise because you haven't had "a lot" of FPs doesn't mean the problem is non-existent. I did submit quite a few of these files as FPs when I tried it out the first time. A month later they're still being detected as malware? Now you might say that maybe they are. However, when I have had some of these files on my system for a couple of years and they aren't detected by Malwarebytes, SAS, Avira, AVZ and a boot CD with Kaspersky and also come up 0/43 or 1/43 at Virus Total then I think it's safe to say they are FPs.

After buying a license for it and installing, it immediately found 11 FPs, quite a few of them the above mentioned files already reported. Then two weeks later out of the blue a .Net framework file digitally signed by Microsoft is detected as malware (0/43 at VT). Not good.

Check out this posting at Passmark. Their software was falsely detected as malware, but after re-naming the file Prevx didn't detect it anymore. WTF? Granted, this posting is three years old, but how many AVs were detecting malware based on file names three years ago? Also notice in his second posting that it took two weeks to convince Prevx that their software isn't malware.

Prevx also seems to detect anything written in the AutoHotkey scripting language. Try downloading some of these files. They are not malware, but every one of them I downloaded was detected by Prevx. An AV that detects malware based on the language isn't confidence-inspiring.