What do you think of McAfee Virus Scan 2004?

Is McAfee 2004 any good? Back in the early nineties McAfee had a good reputation as far as I remember. Later on I got the feeling that this wasnt the case anylonger. Did anyone try the 2004 edition or have any links for good reviews?

 

I have briefly reviewed McAfee V8. I believe that the detection rate has not improved (compared to older versions) since V8 still uses the same scan engine. However, the new GUI is nice and there are several supplementary features (including a "phonehome" feature ;-).

It is quite difficult to assess the quality of the scan engine. Most AV scanners (including McAfee) are good in detecting replicating malware (virii & worms). It is much more difficult to detect compressed/modified trojans though. McAfee uses an approach which is different from Kaspersky AV. McAfee examines (sometimes additionally, sometimes exclusively) the resource section of a trojan in order to identify it. This technique has the advantage that McAfee cannot be easily fooled by compressing or crypting malware. However, it can be outfoxed by editing the resource section (e.g., with resource hacker).

In summary, I would recommend using several scanners including the slender McAfee command-line scanner. A more detailed McAfee report will be published by forge @ return.to/scheinsicherheit. You may also want to have a look @ http://www.rokop-security.de/main/article.php?sid=629

Cheers, Nautilus