Older virus signatures

NOD is a fairly new product compared to some other AV products out there (Mcafee, Symantec). Does anyone have any idea of how far back Eset has gone in creating their signatures ?

 

They are not that new!! http://www.nod32.com/about/about.htm

Cheers,

 

Back in 92, Mcafee seemed to dominate the market. It was like they were the only AV company out there at the time. The Eset name was unheard of unfortunately

 

Symantec/Norton was founded in 1982, Mcafee/NAI in 1989. Trend-Micro in 1988, Panda in 1990, Kaspersky is the relative newcomer founded in 1997.

 

At (SAC - Slovak Antivirus Center) you can find very old NOD file and also some others.

ftp://ftp.sac.sk/sac/avmuseum

nodv195.zip - NOD v1.95 - Early version of Slovak AV
It has 86 kB and it know's 90 viruses .It is in Slovak language.

Use it at your own risk - it was written for old OS's and for old computers .

 

How important to keep the old signatures files (.nup) in "ESET\updfiles" folder . it seems even if they are deleted, NOD stays up-to-date.

 

The number of signatures we have, is usually not important; the most dangerous viruses are normally the current crop, not ones that are 5 years old and are most likely not even in circulation any more.

 

The point I was trying to get across was if the AV companies thought along the same lines as what you stated. There has to be a starting point for all sigs, was just wondering how far back the current version of NOD32 goes.

 

Eset says:

NOD32's core development team has been with us from the very start, and
we believe they are the most talented and highly skilled group of virus
researchers and antivirus programmers in the world today. They have
consistently maintained the unsurpassed quality of the NOD32 Antivirus
System since its release in May 1988 (before the creation of Eset as a company)....