AV-Comparatives February 2007

in aviras case mainly only regarding spyware etc.

 

Thanks. That is what I figured. I'm not that concerned about spyware on my machine so for me Avira free is just as good as Avira paid version although I probably will eventually buy it to support the company.

 

And you are a good person to. Why not get the suite? Better deal.

 

AFAIK Kaspersky and AOL Active Virus Shield have the same on-demand detection ratio

 

Switched your avatar again, trjam?

 

yep, but never my heart.

 

Actually it is Norman + BitDefender + AVG Anti-Malware (the Ewido and AVG engines are unified together and it cannot be called 2 separate engines anymore, because if it was 2 engines together, then the Ewido engine would be scanning more files than the AVG engine due to the generic unpacker present in Ewido, but this is not the case.)

@IBK: I wanted to know, in which areas of detection exactly does AVG Anti-Malware score better than AVG Free/Pro such that it helps it to get an Advanced rating compared to the Free/Pro versions?

 

February 2007:

Only Kaspersky and Avira got advanced + (one engine AVs) as seen on http://www.av-comparatives.org/, comparatives section, on the overview link (above the Notebook Hardware control ad)

 

I agree. It's hard to beat.

 

That is not really a reason to worry. For example, the AVs I have licenses to are all "Advanced" AVs, with the exception of Dr.Web, and I've never had an infection with them running. Generally speaking, even a "Standard" AV is very good already, and getting an "Advanced" AV or better just makes sure that you have reliable protection.

 

its interesting they test f-secure now thou even thou we already know it has high detection rate due to kav engine and avp extended databases
lodore

 

http://img15.imgspot.com/u/07/53/20/Az71172281926.PNG

 

Weird look

 

I hope next on-demand test is even harder so that microsoft wil never get standard and make mcaffe work harder or fail.

 

It does seem that this one was harder than the last one as shown by some highly thought of AVs not achieving their former high level of detection.

Now I admit that I don't want those for which I have licenses to fall until mine expire. I would like all to get so good that the hackers and malware writers would give up.
Yes, I know that is not going to happen.

Best,
Jerry

 

So TrustPort decided to separately integrate the AVG and Ewido engines. Besides, the Ewido engine version as well as the AVG engine version are all wrong. AVG Anti-Malware says that the AntiSpyware engine is at version 4.2.18 while your screenshot says that TrustPort is using version 4.0

AVG Anti-Malware works in Vista, but AVG Anti-Spyware does not. That by itself proves that there were some modifications made to the engines in AVG Anti-Malware. It seems TrustPort decided to not take this route.

 

I sense some hypocrisy in this thread. A few months ago a lot of people said NOD32 was the best. Now it's "slipping" and "mediocre". Boy the world of AVs changes fast. So does the faith of many people, apparently. (I'm not a NOD user, I just think it's lame to support and boast about it, then become sheepish and bash it when it doesn't do as well).

 

Damn, how easy is to forget some things
This is another proof of the strength of the Ewido engine.

So, have you tested these versions too? Or it´s just a guessing?
As always, congratulations for your hard work.

Yes, because:
-PUPS (ad/spyware) are not included in the main test bed.
-Most spywares are labeled as trojans by Antivir (personal experience and observations of CastleCops´MIRT).

Just what I was trying to highlight
A strange move as you´ve said.

 

So many people forget about the ewido engine and assume avg free and pro versions can get advanced when it cannot.

 

Why test the "suite" for AVG and not the standalone AV. Seems to me that this is not a fair comparison to the other AV's tested. For example maybe Dr Web and McAfee would have reached the Advanced Level with the Ewido engine!

 

Yeah I didn't noticed of this before

 

It is important to clarify that AVG AS+AVG Free/Pro is not equal to AVG Anti-Malware. AVG Anti-Malware is not an integration of two programs into one, but rather an integration of one engine into another. As far as other multi engine products go, such as say TrustPort, they have multiple engines, each of which is independent in its operation, scans a different number of files depending upon unpacking support and have separate updates (as far as engine and database are concerned).

On the other hand, AVG Anti-Malware integrates two engines that are owned by the same vendor in such a way that there is no difference between what is scanned by the Ewido engine and what is scanned by the AVG engine. If you disable the Anti-Spyware component in AVG Anti-Malware, you lose even the AVG Potentially Unwanted Applications detections, which was never a part of the Ewido engine to begin with.

And regarding the "suite", AVG Anti-Malware is *not* a suite. The AVG suite is called AVG Internet Security. AVG Anti-Malware is simply AVG with the Ewido database integrated into it. It gives you resident protection and email protection from malware. That is it, no bells and whistles like Firewall or AntiSpam. Besides, AVG's pro version does not include spyware protection (unless you count Potentially Unwanted programs detection which is basically just detection of Greyware). Most (if not all) other AVs do provide Spyware protection as part of their standard paid version package. If we truly want to be fair, then it is quite right to test AVG Anti-Malware which is the paid version of AVG with spyware protection. It is a bonus that the Anti-Spyware engine comes with additional trojan detection.

 

I knew this and that's why I placed the Suite in quotation marks

I disagree here. I consider Ewido having an Anti-trojan engine with additional spyware detection. ( We can now argue about how we classify trojans and spyware ) We do not know the full results but I would guess that the Ewido engine increases the detection of backdoors and trojans compared to the standalone AVG AV engine and therefore pushes AVG Anti-Malware up to the Advanced level. Maybe Andreas can comment on this?

So I still think it would be a fairer comparison if the standalone AV's were tested.

PS See FireFighter's old thread which suggested that an AV's overall detection level was considerably improved by the addition of the Ewido engine.

 

Well, at the very least, we can consider AVG Anti-Malware to be something like TrustPort or AVK since it uses two engines in a single interface. So it can be classified as a multi-engine AV.....Yes, it would be very appreciated if Andreas could comment on what exact categories are affected by the Ewido technology.

Otherwise, we may also have to test Norman with Sandbox disabled, because Norman offers the Sandbox separately to OEMs, if they want to use it that way.