basically softwares without homemade scanner won't be able to use VT. http://blog.virustotal.com/2016/05/maintaining-healthy-community.html?spref=tw That was expected, why a soft would be allowed to use the engines of dozen of vendors without limitations and for free...
The Intelligence Feed that gives access to all uploaded files is far from free. Access will cost you some serious money ;-)
its a Way Out ton cheaper to pay for the API to Virus Total than it is to actually have a massive telemetry data set that is needed for any technology to lower FP. Its even more critical for other techs than ole AV sigs, since if you FP for example with memory protection you slam a process down. Or with machine learning that needs retraining failry constantly and requires a huge data set to do that without high FP rates. Its the dirty secret in the biz-start up a company, pay VT for feed, don't contribute since you don't have much to give, make all sorts of claims. You can look at VT website and see list of partners, assuming that list is accurate, the question becomes-if you don't use VT why not? If you do use VT why is your company name not listed as a partner? You dont get listed for using the API to receive only.
A few more links: Blog from Alex Eckelberry A bomb just dropped in endpoint security… and I’m not sure anyone noticed http://blog.eckelberry.com/a-bomb-just-dropped-in-endpoint-security-and-im-not-sure-anyone-noticed/ and later another blog from Alex Eckelberry It really comes down to beer (endpoint security redux) http://blog.eckelberry.com/it-really-comes-down-to-beer-endpoint-security-redux/ And an article at Reuters Software security suffers as upstarts lose access to virus data http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cybersecurity-sharing-virustotal-anal-idUSKCN0XY0R4
So maybe they will start to make their own engine or just die. As if an airplane company use planes from other companies for free and make money from it. Nonsense.
Interesting links, thanks. But I suppose that apps like SpyShelter that also use VT will not be affected? https://www.spyshelter.com/virus-total-uploader/
I'm not surprised at all. Only software I once used that would probably be affected is Crystal Security. *Oh, and I just read something very interesting...: https://carlgottlieb.com/av-virustotal-cylance/
Some notes on VirusTotal- Webroot Threat Blog Feb, 9th 2016 http://www.webroot.com/blog/2016/02/09/some-notes-on-virustotal/ http://www.webroot.com/blog/2015/12/02/whats-in-a-name/ And who owns VT for the last couple of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirusTotal
Thanks, this clears things up, because I have to admit that some articles did make look certain companies look bad.