AntiVir 7 Premium Open Beta

if i were the antivirus company a reasonable date is when i feel like the product is ready and is all cleared up of bugs, so that i dont have to receive bunch of emails from unhappy users regarding bugs of the product after the final release.

 

If you were a good programmer you wouldn't have to worry about stuff like that. In the case of H+BEDV (the company behind AntiVir), they have always been abysmally slow in completing anything they try, which tends to lead me to believe that their programmers are not as great as people would like to believe they are.

I also find your answer to be a cop out. I look at your user name and take you to be rather young, so perhaps I had better not be so harsh on you. I do however speak my mind and am very blunt, for this I make no apology.

I have done some programing in years past, and I can tell you, if we had of conducted ourselves in this manner we would have been subjected to disciplinary action.

For a project of this type, I would allow no more than one year for it to be fully completed, and bugs that arose would need to be fixed within a twenty four hour period.

Thanks
Wildman

 

mmkay

 

Sorry, but that shows you have no clue about the complexity of AV programming specifically and lowlevel multiplatform programming in general.... an AV is not a closed program that lives in its own tiny confined environment (like for example a database GUI, calculus or whatever else you usually come up with in the world of application programming. It not only involves getting your own code to work, but also geting it to work with the crap other people coded, like LSPs which tend to be programmed quite bad... and getting it to work with buggy videodrivers which think they need to access your memory space (hello nvidia....), not to mention stuff like misinterpreting fileformats in application specific ways, replicating the unique crap behaviour of packers with broken archive headers, or microsoft outbreak express rebuilding any garbled junk so it gets to look like chewed and coughed up MIME.

An AV is something that (hundreds!) of people are working on for several years, if you claim you can write one in one year, which has no problems, with no file format, with no LSP or driver provider.... you show that you have no clue about the task itself.

I'd reckon 70-80% of the work in an AV has to do with working around other peoples mistakes, bugs, and shitty program behaviour. Best recent example T-Online LSP driver, which is so damn incompatible that you want to find the next toilet before you ruin the carpet...., by the way also one of the 'Bugs in the AntiVir Beta" that they have to work around to get the mail scanner running again....

 

I guess we have come a long ways since I did any programing, and from what you say it sure as hell is not for the better. You are right I do not know the complexities of todays programing, and from the sound of it I am damn glad. Now I hear that virus programs use engines that have already been established. Is this true? I think that the basic methods utilized by virus detection programs are standard through the industry. Is this true? Are you telling me that no programmer today has any idea of what they wish to accomplish and then go about trying to obtain the end result? Are you telling me that there are no set formals to accomplish an end result? Gee you must be correct programming today must be a hit and miss proposition. I wonder how the other companies producing virus protection programs accomplish such a thing in a timely manner, perhaps you would care to tell me, or am I just imaging this.

Thanks
Wildman

 

Engines better be constantly under HEAVY development, AV vs VX always was and always will be a race between technologies and techniques. There is a lot of research involved in these fields. Apart from that, every AV vendor uses their own special little tricks, and sometimes very different techniques for achieving detection. Compare for example the different speeds or aproaches for malware detection... mostly heuristic based(NOD32) vs mostly pattern based(KAV) or how they deal with runtime packers, VBA32 uses generic unpacking while KAV mostly relies on static unpacking. There are no "you have to do it this way" solutions to most of the problems.... and don't forget AV vendors want to outperform each other with their codebase... they are very well protected secrets... while sharing samples is normal.

As I have tried to explain it is not only knowing where you want to go, or even finding the nicest way to get there. That can be fairly simple in some cases. As an example, take the RFC MIME standards... It's pretty straightforward. And then look at how email clients interpret that standard, and be amazed that there seems to be not only one way getting to the goal that is "Correct MIME handling". In some cases you cannot even recognize an email file as such even looking with your own eyes, yet still Microsoft Programs 'repair' and fix and fiddle with the file until they can open it. This handling is in so many ways wrong and flawed that I don't even know where to start. And every Email client does it differently! Fixes other problems in the mail, or chokes on some that get fixed by another client.
The point is in this case, that even if you know where to go, and you know how to get there, and you write that code.... one week later some idiot will rely on you reimplementing their approach to handling a specific task in a way that is compatible to the idiots code as well. So in fact you don't write one email extracting software, you reimplement the behaviour of every single email client out there. And when you have done that, they release an update to their client....
And this is only on application level, the same happens in kernel mode! What if nvidia decides (again) to release a bugged driver? Then an AV might crash again as previously happened, and people will come screaming that the AV is at fault. These are problems that can take a very good developer days or weeks to work around if the other company is not interested in cooperating.

You are not alone (in a bad way), your code is in constant change and noone's going to give you the "magic recipe book of how it's done". The field is just too complex, organic and depends on too many things you as a developer have absolutely no influence on.

And if you still don't believe me look at the many exploits for example in archive handling that have come up recently for many different vendors, they have to fight the very same problems, over and over again.

Try asking one of the AV guys here...

I'm not trying to attack you personally, you seem a nice guy in many ways, yet you judge over a topic and over people about something that noone without very deep knowledge in that field can judge. I have done a bit of research in this field and i have some years of experience developing software for tasks that also need to be solved in AV programs (as a tiny part), yet I still do think that if I started writing my own AV I'd be hard pressed in producing a good solution.

These guys are specialists, they have done this work in many cases for 10 to 15 years.... in some cases even 20 years. The oldest article I could find for example about Mr Kurtzhals dates back to the very early 90s.

 

for joter,

I have split your post out of this thread and created one for your problem. Please follow the below link.

This link---> AntiVir 7 Premium Open Beta install problems

 

OK, thanks FRug, I am never to old to learn. Just one more question. Why do some companies get their product to market faster than others, and why is it that H+BEDV appears to be the slowest of the bunch in anything new they come out with? I refer to AVG's development of it's version 7.0. I also remember how long it took them to finely come out with incremental updating. I also believe they were one of the last to bring out heuristics for use in their products. What I am trying to say is that their track record does not look so good, in comparison to other companies offering basically the same type of software. Now I as an average user am left to think that this company is not that great, and a good deal of what is said about it is nothing but hype. This again is one of the reason I love Wilders, you can get information from knowledgeable people. I have a reputation for speaking my mind and being very blunt, and I make no apology for it, however I will admit to mistakes when shown facts that lead to proving me wrong, and on rare occasions I have been known to apologize.

P.S., damn am I glad I do not have to do any programing in this day and age, if what you state is the norm.

Thanks
Wildman

 

Hmm, I don't think I can give a full answer to that question, however i can give an example of why I think they are not 'the slowest'

Look at the performance of heuristic detection in IBKs test, I wouldn't say that many (except for nod and bitdefender) have implemented heuristics to a satisfying extent. I include the old version of antivirs heuristic in that statement(the current beta looks more promising), however take a look at norton (11%) and AVG (4%). This is basically non-existant in my opinion. This is especially surprising since symantec has undoubtedly the largest staff and money pool of all AV companies.

And finally rest assured, development today can be as nice and simple as you've stated before, but it also depends on what kind of software you develop.

 

Thank you, I am learning from you, I just wish the individuals at H+BEDV would take some time to also educate the average user like myself. I have stated on other threads that there are most likely better security protection products available, but I must use what I can afford (which is only "freeware"), and what works well on my machine, taking these limitations into account. I have said I wish I could have used AVAST, but that one caused noticeable slowing of the responses on my machine. I once again admit, I am by no means am expert in this area, but I sure as hell know what does and does not work for me. All of the post I make, I try and use what limited knowledge I do have, and the experiences that have occurred. I also can not stand when I think a product is being portrayed for more than what it actually is. I also do not expect one product to be a do all be all entity. I currently utilize six security related software products, and I know for a fact that there are individuals who utilize much more than that number, in fact some of them post here at Wilders. That is why I quiet often fail to grasp why it takes so long for a company to bring a new product to market.

Thanks
Wildman

 

Well just read on another post that the German version of AntiVir 7.0 has been released today, hopefully the English version will not be far off for those of you who wish to use this product. Believe it or not, I may give this one a shot again, but I think I'll wait for a while to make sure all the excitement has settled down.

Thanks
Wildman

 

Is anyone surprised? Anyone? Anyone at all?

 

Seems version 7 is out of beta

Edit: My mistake, this is for the free version - not the premium.

 

The only reason is because I am solely dependent upon "freeware", and as we all know there are just not that many available. While I currently use an other product, and it works for me, it is rather big and I do pay in terms of how much room it takes on my hard drive. I also if you care to take a close look have never stated that the product was not a good one, no my complaint has been over other issues. No one should be that surprised that I "may" give this another try.

Thanks
Wildman

 

Since the Personal Version is Officially out could we start a new thread on AntiVir 7 please.

 

Nobody has responded to the point which was made re. licence expiry date of end May for AntiVir 7 Classic Edition - I'm pretty sure that AntiVir 6 did not show an expiry date fo the free version.
Are they getting ready to stop supplying the free version?

 

When you start Antivir6 from your desktopicon and look under help / about antivir i see licence date 31-1-2006 for my Antivir 6.32.
The main attraction of Antivir is that it is free for the homeuser.
I hope that we will find free AV software from India or China soon.

 

They said the license will be updated via the updater and there are absolutely no plans to stop distributing the free version

So you can simply ignore whatever date is stated there. Why the license date gets displayed at all though is a mystery to me as well, guess they simply use the same codebase for premium/classic version.

 

@Stefan Kurtzhals
I'm overall very impressed with AntiVir 7 Classic (the final version now), but i have a qustion regarding updater.
It's working as it should, in invisible mode, but thing that bothers my is that everything stalled for like 3 minutes while it was updating. I couldn't open folders, i couldn't start WinAMP, nothing. It just stopped.
It also took ages for AntiVir to restart after update.

I hope this isn't the regular proceedure on very update.
We'll see what happens if there will be another update today...

EDIT:
Weird, now this update went smooth. Though that popup is really annoying so i deleted the program same way as in AntiVir 6. I hope it won't come back...

 

IT WILL.

Regards
joter

 

Thats odd, but on each system startup there is lots of HDD trashing and also on every update check it appears. Kinda annoying when i was used to very silent avast! and NOD32 updating.

 

Where can i get antivir premium demo, or is this possible? I maybe want to buy the premium version.

 

No demo/trial available at the present time. I hope they reconsider this policy.

For those users still restricted to dial-up, the Premium version may be the best as the Servers are different to the Classic ones and therefore much faster.