MRG Effitas 360 Assessment & Certification Q4 2017

MRG Effitas 360 Assessment & Certification Q4 2017
Released: 2018 / 03 /22
https://www.mrg-effitas.com/recent-projects/our-projects/

https://www.mrg-effitas.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/MRG-Effitas-360-Assessment_2017_Q4_wm.pdf

 

^^^ In Q4, same as Q3 results.

Watchdog Anti-Malware is a rebrand of Zemana Antimalware.

 

Interesting results:-
Kaspersky not 1rst - only a level 2 results (result against (PUAs / Adware not good)
Malwarebytes improved (still a fail) but now above Zemana

 

Eset achieves Level 1 status which I believe is a first in this test series.

 

In that regard it may be worth noting that detection of PUPs/PUAs is disabled by default in Kaspersky. That could account at least in part for the poor showing in this report.

The footnotes in the report say:

"iii During installation of the security application, if an option to detect PUAs was given, it was selected."

The key phrase here is "During installation" - I take that to mean if the installer asks if you want that option selected then it is set. If the installer (such as for (KAV/KIS) does not specifically ask that question then presumably the detection will be off. Until the user opens the settings and manually sets it. I suspect that this may not have been done for this testing.

I suspect the testing tries to mimic a typical user's steps when installing a product. That may not include tweaking advanced settings.

 

Kaspersky's biggest weakness is PUP/PUAs. Thankfully.

 

Yes, it doesn't detect many PUPs, but does do slightly better than Bitdefender in that regard. As someone who uses a number of programs that can be considered PUPs, poor PUP detection is not a big deal for me.

 

I reinstalled KIS few times in past week and if I remember correctly at the end of installation it asks about PUA and an option is enabled by default.

 

Per the report, Kaspersky missed 1 financial and 11 PUA samples. I assume the one they are disputing is the financial malware sample. It is possible the missed PUA's were coin miners. Most AV solutions are no longer classifying them as PUA's but as Trojans.

 

it asks about whether you want it to automatically uncheck boxes for bundled software (i.e. chrome bundled w/ccleaner, etc). pua/pup detections are enabled by a separate checkbox in the product, "detect other software"

 

Yes, you're right. That setting might prevent you from accidentally installing PUA, but it won't improve detection.

 

yeah, would be nice if they included a PUP/PUA option at install like ESET does