Prevx RC 3.0.4.228

Seems to have gone very quiet here! Am I missing something

 

Lol, I am still here and using it. Dont use the RC though. Wish Prevx had invested the effort into improving cleaning instead of that web thing.

 

Hi trjam

Thanks for the reassurance. I am interested in the beta which I have been testing and it is unlike Joe to be absent unless his rushing around the world between conferences, etc. OR if a final release is due.

Personally I find the "web thing" to be very good and useful but must agree that Prevx's achilles heel at present is the incomplete cleaning. A review of a competitor product noted that it had just disloged Prevx from being Editor's Choice due to better cleaning ability. I am not saying that I necessarily go by this magazine reviews but I think that the 'weakness' in this department compared to competitors is something that should be addressed and hopefully Prevx have plans to look at this once v3.0 Final is released.

After all there is only so much that they can do whilst trying to respond to all the feedback they get from beta testers.

 

The gone quiet may mean that people may not be running into as many problems with it too. That would be a good thing. Personally, I haven't had any problems with this beta at all.

 

there has been so much attention given to Safeonline (rightfully so) that the part of Prevx which is nearest and dearest to my heart, the protection and clean-up, has largely been off of the radar.

i mention this because if i recall correctly, this build also features a reworked protection engine, and there has been no mention of what users will gain from this effort.

has anyone noticed improvements in detection/clean-up or/and reduced FP's?

 

Re: the FPs, I haven't had that many to start with, perhaps two if I recall correctly that occurred with the stable release, but they were promptly dealt with. There hasn't been any with the beta builds. Settings are at medium though on all counts.

 

The cleanup "issues" that were pointed out by the PC Magazine review were empty registry keys and blank files - not the most important things to have

We guarantee our malware cleanup (http://www.prevx.com/freescan.asp#tt_guaranteed) so it obviously must be working quite well in the real world

 

This is very true The complete internal changelog between v3.0.1.65 and v3.0.5.1 (we're nearing a final release, and that is the current build which will be coming out to testers soon) has nearly 1000 changes in it - we haven't been sitting idle!

The complete rewrite of the protection engine massively reduces overhead and significantly improves database communication. There will be a sizable uptick in detections, partly because of new detection algorithms rolled out in the client and then also a revamped centralized sandboxing system which performs server-side analysis of malware.

The cleanup engine has a handful of improvements but we're waiting for Prevx 4.0 to roll out the major improvements in it. As per the PC Magazine review, we are going to be adding removal for garbage data - like empty registry keys and data files created by malware. That, however, is more of "icing on top of the cake" rather than real technological benefits, which will be prominently coming in v4.0.

Although we do fine on them now, we've seen one case of a new technique which requires manual work to clean so we will be updating our cleanup engine accordingly. However, in its defense, we have not updated a single component of our generic cleanup engine in over 5 months and it has only failed on a small number of stray threats (which resulted in our engineers promptly fixing the user's PCs remotely) after it has successfully cleaned literally millions of threats automatically with no changes from our end. All of our competitors write signatures to remove specific files, which is why they are marginally more successful with stray, dormant components - ours, however, is completely generic. While PC Magazine may deem our cleanup as imperfect, I believe our track record speaks for itself, at least against real threats

 

any news on that database restructuring u mentioned in a PM?

 

The communication changes applicable to your system will first be in Prevx 4.0 (as they are very fundamental in nature so we can't just toss them in )

 

I haven't had any false positives in ages and I run Max/Med/Med on the sliders.

 

ah ok, a while away then

 

nice (i knew there was a reason i keep hanging in with this product )

while we are on the subject of core Prevx functionality, i was wondering if you (Joe) would be willing to give a refresher course on P3's behavior monitoring functionality. i ask because i truly would like to ween myself completely from conventional HIPS. at present i use Comodos Defense Plus in a reduced capacity. i only have it monitor RPC/DNS services, Protected Files & Folders, Driver Installation, Physical Memory, and Disks Access. Answering pop-ups from even this basic D+ set-up are often for me just best guesses. i have been fortunate to have not hosed my system too often by these guesses.

i would like to automate this, and i believe i read something of yours indicating Prevx could in fact be a cloud based HIPS. am i nuts or is D+ soon to be kicked to the curb??

Mike

 

Hi Joe

Thanks for the update...extrememly comprehensive and useful as ever.


I echo threedog's comment about FPs...none seen for...well I don't really remember when and to be honest I have not experienced a single glitch with SafeOnline preventing me from doing anything that I was supposed to be able to do. So all in all 228 is working fine here.

The faithful standby to test what ever else Prevx want to put out before a Version 3 final...and then hopefully move on to testing a Version 4 beta.

Let us know! We are watching and waiting!

 

Just updated to 3.0.5.2 with a load of new 'partner configured' domains in the 'Safe Online' settings.
Now off to bed so will have a better look in the morning

 

Hello all,
We've released a new RC build with details here: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=256629

Please let me know if you find any issues and thank you for the testing!