VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware is now released

Well, no offense but I really dont think he is going to say it has "Bad" detection if he wants a paycheck.

 

@ Malcontent, Saraceno and Atomic_Ed -- all your ideas are all very good and I'll take this up with our marketing folks on Monday.

Well, that's not good. Rest assured that we extensively test both products together, so a HIPS alert like this shouldn't be happening. Check to make sure you're running the latest version:

http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Home-Home-Office/Sunbelt-Personal-Firewall/

and if so, please email me offlist at alexe(at)sunbeltsoftware.com and we'll get you some help.

We will be integrating SPF into VIPRE later this year as you probably know.

Re file scanning:

We have real-time scanning of files on-access. The confusion comes from the earlier beta, where we didn't have an on-demand single-file scanner. You could only scan one file by scanning the drive. That was put in a later beta. It's right there in the Explorer context menu -- right click on a file to scan.

[And yes, I do know it's a confusing point ;-)]

These are good points. With some of these, I hope to never see them in VIPRE. I think that's the problem with the existing AV products -- too many features piled on to each other, all of them creating potentials for conflicts and slow-downs. It's a race to add features that they license or get through acquisitions, in order to justify ever-increasing subscription revenue, or to win reviews.

VIPRE is a pure-play antivirus product. It has one job, protecting the user against viruses, trojans and other malware from entering the system. We wrote it from scratch to make sure it was highly efficient.

Adding additional features out of the scope will only create more and more problems, from system instability, to accidental "DDoS-like attacks" on innocent websites, to more components to debug and manage.

Now, that being said, I think we can continue to add more functionality to our real-time scans, such as in the area of web filtering. SPF has a web-filtering component which will get integrated into VIPRE. So your point about http scanning I agree with.

My philosophy is "everything that you need, and nothing you don't". I'm a big fan of clean, powerful, simple tools that do what you need, without a bunch of extra stuff attached to it.

Maybe I'll be proven wrong in this viewpoint, but right now, it was enough work just to create an AV product from scratch ;-)

@Darkbutterfly, First, I appreciate all the work you did in testing. We did check the Comodo issue and weren't able to find anything, but this is a very popular firewall so if you find the same issues in the release version, let me know. The updates are, right now, large, because we're being careful deploying the incremental updates to insure that they work right. We are working on having those in place by early next week, so download times for the definitions will only be high on the first download, not subsequent ones.

@Baz -- the suggestions you sent over were really good. I sent them to the dev team and they are getting on your suggestions.

I don't get that, sorry if I'm dense. We don't pay anyone for reviews. ??

But to all of you, a large part of Sunbelt staff is reading these forums. Keep the suggestions, criticism and anything else coming. If we miss something, we'll get on it asap.

 

Fly:

You asked:

That would be Active Protection, which scans files both "on execute" (i.e., when they're run) and "on access" (i.e., when they're opened or copied). VIPRE's Active Protection scans files in both types of situations "real time." And VIPRE's Active Protection is completely configurable -- just open the AP settings from the main VIPRE status window.

DarkButterfly was referring to the ability to right-click on an individual file and scan it. VIPRE most certainly does have the ability to scan individual files in that way. Take any file, right click on it, and you will see the context menu option "Scan with VIPRE."

Actually, malware these days is often packed with executable packers like UPX, and VIPRE does have the ability to handle a wide variety of executable packers, which are typically used by malware authors to obfuscate files. And VIPRE can unpack packed executable files during "on access," "on execution," and "on demand" scans of files.

VIPRE can also handle the most common archive compression formats like ZIP and RAR. We will shortly be expanding the list of archive compression formats that VIPRE recognizes (our developers' focus has been mainly on executable packers because of the threat involved).

Sunbelt is planning an integrated "suite" product (anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, anti-spam), and I'm sure such a feature will be discussed. It has already been proposed in our beta forums by other users.

Best,

Eric L. Howes
Sunbelt Software

 

Thank you for answering some questions.

However, I have one important question left.

Undoubtedly VIPRE has a way to deal with (the consequences of) malicious scripts, since that's a big part of the malware scene.

McAfee has a feature that specifically scans for malicious scripts. Does VIPRE have something similar ?

 

Fly:

VIPRE does indeed handle malicious scripts. In fact, we have a few researchers who specialize in writing detections for malicious scripts.

Best,

Eric L. Howes
Sunbelt Software

 

its cool that alot of sunbelt staff are now on here, obviously Mike has brought them.

to be honest, its a quick, easy and free way to get some feedback, suggestions and bug fixes for the customers, or just plain testers of the software.

 

the next schedule for VB100 is on August. lets see if viper will be included

 

Finally a voice of reason from an AV vendor, wow! I really am tired of these suites' bloatware that pretends to do all-in-one yet do most of the "extras" job poorly and way below the protection level of specialized products that it forces to be removed.

Once again, really appreciated point of view!

 

Thanks Alex, i have raised a support ticket through your website. It seems to be very easily replicated by launching the latest version of iTunes. HIPS seems to flag the SBAMTray Application as the culprit. c:\program files\sunbelt software\VIPRE\sbamtray.exe

At the moment i have it listed in 'exceptions' so it does not occur.


By the way, i have bought a full licence for VIPRE. I take it there is then no point in buying SPF as it is going to get integrated into VIPRE in the future? What if i want to use SPF now is there a deal on the go as there is currently only 30 days trial


Regards

 

Chris,

Having known of Eric for a number of years back to the inception of IEspyad and having known of Alex only since his involvement with Sunbelt, I can say for a fact you "obviously" have no clue of how wrong you are with that thought\statement. Eric and Alex have provided endless support in many of the nets Security Forums over the years concerning their software, long before "Mike" became an employee with Sunbelt.

 

looks very interesting

 

You can count on that! I sure will give my feedback if the release candidate still conflicts with Comodo Memory Firewall.

And do you NEVER DARE to pay for reviews! Rather waste your money on enhancing your security tools!

@eburger

I'm guessing the single-file scanning is part of the latest release candidate? Anyway, if now has single-file scanning, then it is a good improvement in VIPRE.

Best regards

 

Unfortunately I can't test this right now. However, Counterspy is pretty good and this looks promising. The resource usage from the graphs also looks very good.

 

i kinda like it myself so far not at all bad. i personally would however like better includision of the firewall in the one app. that would be great imo

 

Kis fan here, YET Ive been using Vipre for a few days now and i like it.... Cant say much on resources though as i own a quad at 3.4 and nothing slows it down. But i love the interface, its easy and clean.

I do however wish it included a firewall in it..... or at least for now to be able to run there firewall , yet there is no 64 bit version which amazes me to no end.
So im using outpost right now, which i had to dissect some to play nice with vipre.

i am a counterspy owner also, so the 9.99 deal is a great one. Whether i purchase or not is up in the air..I really don't like running outpost and much rather prefer to use the all in one suite of KIS I have..... unless of course sunbelt decides to step up to 64 bit with there firewall..... Come on guys, 64 bit been out for a long time now..step it up.....

Zfactor has it spot on..... Get that 64 bit firewall in Vipre and then you gonna have a winner...

 

Interesting, does anyone know which country this AV is from, looks like another new kid on the block.

 

It's a US AV.

 

my biggest concern is on boot it stops everything from running for about 2 minutes as it loads & just froze up my mailbox on a small ad from Landsend, It's ligh but it should take that long to load & shouldn't shut my mailbox down on a small vender ad...

 

Working very nicely here on a fresh Vista SP1 machine.
Few questions though..

Firstly, how often does the database update? It's 2 days old currently.
Does the auto-update work if no one is logged onto the system?

Also, what about self-protection of the software. I attempted to terminate the main service, and whilst the process didn't disappear out of the task manager, it seemed to completely kill my system -- hard resetting was needed to bring it back to life.

Also, it doesn't seem to detect any of the files in the well known "455VIREN.ZIP" file.. though these are probably too old to do any damage now.

And lastly.. does it have some sort of web/HTTP based scanning to complement the on-access protection.

 

Can you get me more detail on that -- what email client, and what platform? We'll take a look into it.

Alex Eckelberry, CEO
Sunbelt Software

 

You have to be logged in for the auto-update to work. These days running about one def update a day, but that will increase. There should be an update later today.

We do have self-protection, perhaps that's why the system required a hard reset. There are many Sunbelt developers tracking this forum so we'll be taking a look.

We should. I've got a note in to the developers to check it.

See my discussion here:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1287680&postcount=52

The Sunbelt Personal Firewall does offer web filtering, and that will be integrated in the next major release.


Alex Eckelberry, CEO
Sunbelt Software
alexe(at)sunbeltsoftware.com

 

Correct, we wrote it completely from scratch. Virus Bulletin did a pre-review here which gives more detail on the history, etc.

http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/documents/vipre-virus-bulletin-review-july-2008.pdf

Also my various blog posts explain a lot about what we're doing:

Original philosophy behind VIPRE:

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/evolving-antimalware-technology-model.html

Beta announcement one year later:

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/later-this-week-vipre-goes-to-beta_02.html

Release announcement last week:

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/vipre-antivirus-antispyware-is-now.html

These will explain a lot of the thinking and the philosophy behind the product.

To all, please keep the suggestions/critiques/ideas coming, It's a first release and we have a lot of things we want to continue to do to it, and don't hold back in any things you might want to see in there -- or problems you may be having.

Alex Eckelberry, CEO
Sunbelt Software

 

@alexeck

I made a clean install of Windows Vista SP1 and I first installed CMF (Comodo Memory Firewall) and I was able to close the command line by typing exit. I then installed VIPRE and I no longer was able to close the command line by typing exit.

Please take in consideration that I made this test with the latest beta release. I will test the Gold version, later on, and will tell you if the same issue happens.

Best regards.

 

I agree with some sort of discount.Here is something I like to see for new cutomers, like a 29.95 for a single license for one yr or a discounted price for two yrs for lets say 42.95 and each addition yr there after of 19.95 renewal for existing customers.For mutilple licenses maybe 39.95 for one yr or 52.95 for two yrs and 29.95 for each addition yr there after. better yet a lifetime license.

 

VIPRE does not seem to scan *.zip files

After downloading the eicar test file in a zip format and then doing a manual file scan - nothing. Only when you extract the zip file does the malware get detected and blocked.

Is this by design?