Free AV's

Discussion in 'other anti-virus software' started by Kees1958, Apr 17, 2008.

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  1. 19monty64

    19monty64 Registered Member

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    LOL According to my tests, the 3 free-avs scored 100%...I didn't get a single infection with any of them. LOL But FP's, oy vey, don't get me started. My AV is now on-demand. I open it when I'm bored and need a FP to rile me up again. LOL
     
  2. 19monty64

    19monty64 Registered Member

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    Sorry. I'll stay out of your thread then...
     
  3. Ximi

    Ximi Infrequent Poster

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    But is virus.gr a real antivirus test?
    i dont know if it is, because they have not added any new test since one year ago, and i think one year is to much.
    I would understand if they add new antivirus test every 3 month or 6 month, but once at year.
     
  4. Dwarden

    Dwarden Registered Member

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    q:
    are these samples available to AV staff in question or they from some home grown sample garden You keep in secret just to shock listeners on bar when You mention some deadly story ?

    no matter how seriously these claims sound ... i must laugh more often each time i read such one ... as they just words in thin air

    what i would love for REAL test is test which shows WHERE each antivirus fail ...
    so what's hard to flat out declear results like
    Avast fail to unpack these packers or even identify this type of malware family or unable to detect these variants of that poly, it fails to detect this MBR type of rootkit etc.
    same goes about AVG, AVIRA, BT, KAV, NOD32 w/e...

    i mean it's nice to know what each AVs can detect but real key point is to know weaknesses of each ...
     
  5. duke1959

    duke1959 Very Frequent Poster

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    19monty64 don't be put off by what solcroft says. He's like that with pretty much everyone. LOL. Sometimes people don't see the wit behind the humor and can only see it as sarcasm. I like all the free AV's and wouldn't worry about infections with any of them. I used PC Tools AV and liked it. I am inclined to think sooner or later any of them can miss something the other one wouldn't have. I'm just happy there are 4 choices and for the most part all run well, or are being improved.
     
  6. larryb52

    larryb52 Registered Member

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    maybe you need new samples, Avast is a better program than Avira as Avira will call a good exe file bad because of it's poor heutistics...IMO a false positive is just as bad as getting a virus...get it right or don't use the technology...
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 18, 2008
  7. emperordarius

    emperordarius Registered Member

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    I don't know about anyone else's tests. But, every summer, starting 2 years ago, instead of going outside and enjoying going to the beach and getting fun with my family....I remain inside my home, install a fresh Xp in my Virtual Machine (2006 VMWare, 2007 Virtual Machine, this year I'll use VirtualBox), download trials of as much antiviruses as I can find, and start my tests. In my last tests, this summer, the results about these AVs are these:
    Avast: ≈75-80% malware, ≈ 40% spyware, ≈ 60/70% trojans. False positives: a few
    AVG: ≈ 90% malware, ≈ 70% spyware, ≈ 85% trojans. False positives: had some false positives, expecially with legitimate packed softwares, and a few of those "keygens".
    Avira ≈ 98% malware, ≈ 85% (missed some spyware and adware, although it's detection is overall very good, supposing that it "doesn't" provide protection against those), ≈95+% trojans. False positives: actually not much, not even with those "keygens".


    I don't wanna make any comparative with those, just wanted to show you my results. Testing has been completely objective. However, consider that the tests are a bit old (August-September), and that newer ones will come soon.

    Even having Avira, I wouldn't go online without a firewall, some anti-spywares, anti-rootkits and a sandboxed browser.
     
  8. duke1959

    duke1959 Very Frequent Poster

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    Once again I don't worry too much about which AV offers the best detection as I believe any one should be enough for most users. As far as prevention, it would seem one or two may have the edge, but I'm not sure how this can be proven out as not everyone surfs the same way. I do know my son and wife use Avast and both go willy nilly through the internet and have never gotten infected. Not because Avast is so good, but because nothing tried to get into their PC's. I surfed some rather let's just say immodest sites already for testing purposes only of course, (wink) and Avast stopped a Trojan with its Web Shield. I also had Avira catch something in the past when installed, but I wonder if this would have been the case in reverse? I like to read what people who repair and clean PC's for a living have to say and what AV's they claim let the most malware in. There is usually one AV that stands out, but hopefully this has changed.
     
  9. emperordarius

    emperordarius Registered Member

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    True. Today's hard to judge if there actually is a best av or nor. Nowadays, taking A,B,C... as antiviruses, you can clearly notice that sometimes A finds more than others, sometimes B etc... where some other times all find something except for one particular one, and other stuff like that. I don't know if I should believe in best detection or not. Let's say, for example, av-comparatives gives Avira the best detection (talking about single engined). While you might just find in online scans like jotti (since av comparatives are based only on scanning) that almost ALL other antiviruses might find a file, while Avira doesn't find. Nothing. And this might happen (happens) a lot of times. Same thing for Kaspersky, NOD32, BitDefender, etc...., when less popular antiviruses like **** or ******* or ******* (don't want to mention) (not that they are not good, but less popular) might find the threat (and it's not always about false positives). Just like the Rustock.c was found. Dr.Web supposely had a ≈ 90% detection, found the rustock.c and successfully could clean it sooner than other companies.
     
  10. solcroft

    solcroft Registered Member

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    That would depend very heavily on whether you have any ability to verify that a file you're looking at is a virus or not (behavior analysis, unpacking, reverse disassembly) as opposed to just staring at a list of antivirus results, scratching your head, and saying "Oh, I guess it's a virus."
     
  11. solcroft

    solcroft Registered Member

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    Perhaps I should take a leaf out of IBK's book and make a nice tabulated summary of my results. Judging by how many followers AV-Comparatives seems to have, it looks like people fall for neat tables. ;)
     
  12. Macstorm

    Macstorm Registered Member

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    Something similar happened to me one time ago, with avira flagging a sample i had as a 'malicious behavior' on its part (it was not a FP): they pointed to 'ethical reasons' for this detection :rolleyes: . On the other side, kaspersky said the file was 'completely harmless' :D
     
  13. wildvirus88

    wildvirus88 Registered Member

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    I believe more in your results than some popular results that sounds nonsense for me... When I say I do my own tests I do something of this type... If I start now and get 2 computer for comparison... I format and install WinXP in both PCs... After I install Avast in A and Avira in B... After that I'll only decide that all e-mails I receive with a link to EXE/COM/BAT/SCR file I'll execute it... I'll receive all e-mails from the same account... I'll keep it for 1 month... If I get 100 samples (only by e-mail, for example) in 1 month the results will be about 90%-95% of detection in the computer with Avira and less than 50% with Avast... Of course it's only a test of samples received by e-mail and it's hipotetic... But in the real world I really get samples received by e-mail and I get samples from underground websites (some websites that people distribute their new samples every day)... and the results is about 90-95% to Avira/F-Secure/Kaspersky and less than 50% for Avast...
    No one need to believe that my results are representative... but I don't need to believe that other tests are representative too...
    About virus.gr... the fact that the test is 1 time in a year is nothing...
     
  14. Ximi

    Ximi Infrequent Poster

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    Ohh yeah it is something!
    i mean 1 time per year it's not good at all, thats why i wounder if the virus.gr... is real or not.
    A normal trusty antivirus-test usualy test the software every 6 month or every 4, but virus.gr.... take's the price :)
     
  15. whoiam

    whoiam Registered Member

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  16. solcroft

    solcroft Registered Member

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    Only for six months, though.

    Still, you gotta love the Chinese. They're full of great bargains, if you know where to look. :D
     
  17. L815

    L815 Guest

    If you think about it, the slower your system runs with an AV running, the less likely you will catch a anything, because the rate of accomplished tasks is reduced by > 20%.

    The best AV is a balance between comfort and user style. Detections are too dynamic to ever be best.


    How are Risings detections? Looks like a decent product.
     
  18. Kees1958

    Kees1958 Registered Member

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    It is more a HIPS with a blacklist when you are asking me. Impressive feature set of the HIPS (scope of D+ covered 'plus more', in a a very granular select and klick controlable user interface)

    In a small statistical irrelevant scan test (+/- 1400 malware samples), rising found 449 malwares (Avira free found 964). Off course malwares were obtained from a honeypot, so contain a lot of zero-day malwares.

    Also info is very criptic (program XXXX trigered API), These messages appear after your system halted to a complete stop. When this delay should be caused because the virtualisation active heuristics kicked in and could not find a malware (because I was using a POC-test), then I am impressed, otherwise it slows down awfully.

    So to me Rising needs some additional work, and polishing of rough edges, but certainly is one to watch.


    @Solcroft: have you tested it?
     
    Last edited: May 15, 2008
  19. snazzy

    snazzy Registered Member

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    I may not understand the technical terms you guys use here but i'll go for AVAST Home Edition over any other AV anytime, anyday. One of the reasons for this is becos it updates itself automatically unlike other AVs, although it's scanning takes quite some time.
     
  20. Kees1958

    Kees1958 Registered Member

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    I think TF should also qualify as a free AV.

    Avast web shield kept dead silent when enjoying some kilwow drive by's. TF pops up, saying it encountered a buffer overflow and code was execution from an akward location, so bingo and nailed it.
     
  21. L815

    L815 Guest

    I decided to give the newest Avast release on my Vista system, which was previously running Avira, and I must say the speed has improved.
     
  22. acr1965

    acr1965 Registered Member

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  23. bahamot

    bahamot Registered Member

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    The OEM for Norman deal is already expired.
     
  24. acr1965

    acr1965 Registered Member

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  25. ghodgson

    ghodgson Registered Member

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    This is underneath in small print.

    Gordon
     
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