SuperAntiSpyware - opinions and or test results

Even for the free version of Ad-aware? Cripes, all the free scanners have an executable that needs to be running now - AVG and A-squared as well.

 

Eicar is ment to for av's to make sure the realtime protection is active no more no less.
the spycar test is ment to be used against HIPS programs.
now superantispyware is an antispyware app so thats why it didnt pass the test.
there is no test to test realtime antispyware protection.
i use the registry guard in kaspersky to protect against registry changes
so all i need superantispyware for is to block malware that kaspersky misses.
lodore

 

SAS won't neccessarily miss new threats.
"Multi-Dimensional Scanning detects existing threats as well as threats of the future by analyzing threat characteristics in addition to code patterns."-from the SAS website.

The reason that SAS doesn't pass Spycar is because it is not considered a threat by the developer.

 

For some reason Spyware Terminator's realtime shield blocks most attempted changes made with Spycar. There really is no difference whether the HIPS of ST is enabled or not. At least that is what happened when I tried it a couple months back.

 

I don't know if "spyweeper" was a typo, but I got a laugh out of it.

It kind of drives me nuts the way people abuse the term "resources". It's never clear what this means: CPU usage? Memory? Threads? Handles? Doughnuts? Gasoline?

 

I actually own "lifetime" licenses to both AVG-AS and SAS (“lifetime” being a pretty nebulous concept in software licenses).

Which one is better -- heck if I know.

They both have let things into my system -- as it seems to me that if your AV does not catch it, it probably will not get caught by your AS/AT..

They both have found things the other has not.

I used to be a little more enthusiastic about Ewido back in the rapid development days.... but they (under AVG) may be making a comeback. I’m very encouraged by the very recent development of the Ewido team going to bat for us “unlimited” license guys against the corporate behemoth Grisoft.

I like the responsiveness of the SAS guy... SAS does seem to be more rapidly evolving...

They both have had some bad reviews in tests..

I'd guess that SAS is good enough that they will be bought at some point... and that does change the nature of the product (i.e. PestPatrol, Giant...).

People think I'm kidding when I say that in cases like this, it should come down to the "comparative beer indicator analysis." I'm not.

I've found again and again in life that the type of beer a person drinks is an indicator on how that person thinks, how dynamic and open-minded that person is....how much the person ‘thinks out of the box’….. which is all reflected in their products.

If you do a search, it's already established that our SAS guy drinks pretty good beer. Unless the Ewido (AVG) guys drink Belgian brews or the fuller bodied German beers (I believe the Ewido guys are located in Germany), it would be tough to surpass our SAS guy in the beer test indicator analysis.

 

The reason SAS fails Spycar is because it is not able to protect the Registry against changes unless it perceives a threat. This is why it also fails the RegDefend test. ZAP and CounterSpy both spot changes being made and intercept them. In this regard they are both offering better realtime protection than SAS.

But there are tests to determine whether an app is capable of protecting the system against adverse changes where its sigs or heuristics don't smell danger, and SAS fails them all.

You might be better off investing in an AS device capable of offering execution protection (which KAV lacks) then you could prevent Reg changes from happening in the first place! BTW by default KAV's Reg Guard is only protrcting limited areas of the Registry, while execution protection could protect it all!

Sounds like heuristics to me! That won't catch everything that needs to be caught.

The reason it doesn't pass spycar is the reason that it doesn't pass any of the other tests involving Reg changes - it cannot do so unless it can identify a known threat. To put it quite simply - SAS doesm't protect the Registry while its competitors (eg ZAP and CS etc) can and do offer such protection.

I also understand (correct me if I'm wrong) that SAS does not protect against commercial Keyloggers, and that is another reason why it doesn't do so well in tests and reviews.

OK so it cleans machines - but that does not make it best choice for realtime protection.

 

SAS seems to use substantial resources when in real time protection mode. Around 36.000 K, compared with my NOD32 at around 21,000K.
Seems a bit odd that an anti spy-ware application uses more than an anti-virus application!

 

As an FYI - NOD32 also features kernel level resource usage not monitored by task manager. Windows also swaps out unused memory, so using 36MB is nothing in today's world - it's not slowing your system at all, simply looking at the memory number really doesn't tell much - just so you know.

 

Hey nameless,
yes it was a typo
well with spysweeper in terms of resource hog i ment the fact it takes like 5minutes to load at startup and uses around 100percent cpu during that time which makes it impossible to use the computer.
and of course it locked up the whole pc about three times which means i had to wait another 5minutes waiting before i could untick the load at windows startup checkbox.
lodore

 

@topperId,
what app does offer excustion protection?
it needs to be eiether free or cheap since im getting a new pc for myself soon and i would need to buy a license for both machines as well as the cost of my new pc.
also if i remember correctly the deeepguard in f-secure once blocked my soundcard driver from doing anything.
which ment i had to do alot of cleaning out temp files and reboots to make creative allow me to finish the install properly. also i had to put f-secure deepguard on ask me on everything so it didnt block it again.
this isnt a rant againt f-secure. this is just showing the downsides of fp's with excution protection.
lodore

 

Rgis could go on long into the night, and even next year before SAS even get detection rates and removal rates even close to Webroots Spy Sweeper, resource hog or not, It isnt a resource hog on My Machine, but my machine is my machine not yours, so I cant do anything about it running heavily on yours, but on mine it runs just dandy And like it or leave it, its lighter on cpu than SAS is, well in my case anyway

 

you must some weird machine
spysweeper 5.5takes ages to load on my machine.
5.2 took alot less time to load.
so something in 5.5 is causing it to take longer to load.
all i know is that superantispyware works perfectly on my machine and ive had tons of bugs with spysweeper mainly involving fulll lockup of my machine needing a hard reboot or bsod.
also can you prove the detection rate and removal rate of spysweeper is as good as the older versions were?
i have seen most of my problems with the 5x line and quite a few fp's as well.
lodore

 

Well it still pounces on anything suspect or nasty trying to install, and quickly quarentines it,Also it still blocks access to known malware sites, and prompts you to proceed at your own risk. Do you run, or did you run Spy Sweeper at default settings? or did you add the Keylogger Shield also? having said that I have the Keylogger active, so forget I said that bythe way resources in my task manager report Spy Sweeper consuming 1,760k now thats not a hog amount is it

Oh and my Machines not weird its a:
AMD Athlon (tm) 64x2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.40Ghz with a Windows Experience rating of 5.1
Running Vista Ultimate

 

ah ha all programs seem to use less resource on vista.
on XP spysweeper does use quite alot of ram and takes ages to load.
so basically it works fine on your pc but i have had tons of bsod and freezing with it. i have been a spysweeper subscripber since version 3.0
so i know 3.0 and 3.5 of spysweeper was a great app and no resource hog and no bsod or freezing issues. but since 4.5 ive had so many problems with it.
i think thats when the core team done a runner.
lodore

 

Well soon you will have three new pc's. As you mentioned several times you are building a new one, you are going to buy one and you will have one for Xmas present. Then try SS again on fresh machines as I am sure it will be total different than the bs you experience now.

Gerard

 

Hi Iodore;
If you're getting a new machine you are likely to be on Vista, that will narrow choices. To be honest, the only Vista compatible AS prog I'm familiar with that has execution protection is CounterSpy. Costing about £10 with a renewal of £5 a year, it is cheap but you would need to give it a darn good trial to make sure it is fully compatible with your intended system. I had some problems with earlier builds, but 2.5.1032 cuts the mustard for me!

A true HIPS prog will offer execution protection that prevents any program from running until you OK it (unless it has prior permission to run); and that will include legitimate progs such as rundll32.exe, regsvr32.exe, cmd.exe, ntvdm.exe, wscript.exe etc etc. Thus, if hostile code attempts to exploit any of these by running them, you can (if correctly configured) prevent this.

With CS's exection protection though, it will permit all legitimate progs to run, since they are in its database; it will only query unknown progs. However this will enable you to prevent drive-by trojans from executing, and if the trojan file is recognised as being bad then it will be automatically quarantined (when using default configuration). Of course if it is not recognised ('cos it's a new threat) you will have the choice to block it.

 

Hi gerard,
infact just one new pc.
but im not the only one with problems with spysweeper 5x seris search for the old threads withother people dumping spysweeper for being a resourse hog and buggy.
i dont really want that crap on my new pc.
i might try it once but i dono.
lodore

 

If I remember right, your Father bought the SS you're using a while ago. If you install it on your new pc, don't post any complaints.

 

Very true.

Eric Howes' site http://www.spywarewarrior.com/ was a good credible source, but he is no longer does reviews since working with Sunbelt.

Other than the site noted by TopperID's post(#4), the only other site I'm aware of is http://www.2-spyware.com/ -- but do not know how credible they are.