Vipre Antivirus

Pc Anti-virus review 2011


Vipre Resource usage test


Real-time resource usage was the lowest of all the antivirus software we tested, using only about 0.5% of memory.

A full-system, manual scan peaked occasionally at 50% - 60% CPU usage, then dipped back down as it moved to different parts of the antivirus scan.

Only about 60MB of memory was used during a manual scan.

Very good, especially compared to some of VIPRE's heavier competitors.

 

Yeah, but all those are know to be heavy so the deck is stacked. Try the same test with Avira, Eset and Avast.

 

Why don't you just post your own results with those three, trjam?

 

In both Premium and Standard versions, VIPRE Advanced Active protection settings allow for the handling of unknown programs and handling of suspicious programs. VIPRE states that "some Unknown Programs may be found to have suspicious characteristics". I'd say that this is the heuristics. And it is not enabled by default, as I recall.

 

Thanks for posting those graphs, flaubert71.
And here is a link to a very in-depth PC Antivirus review of both Standard and Premium versions (note two tabs).

 

There are a number of behavior monitors under these settings; but they are apparently missing from the latest beta!

It has separate engines for heuristics; Genscan™, Cobra™ and the MX-V emulation engine.

 

that's not heuristics settings. that's unknown program handling and it's being removed in the next service release of VIPRE.

*edit* whoops, missed that blackcat beat me to it.

mx-v is the neatest of the three technologies - code emulation engine that inspects code upon execution in a virtual environment. it's extremely fast and very effective. sunbelt posted a video with one of their researchers demonstrating how it works a couple years back. cool stuff.

 

They have had a number of complaints about this and it might be back again for version 5!

Yes that's Michael St. Neitzel, our very own Inspector Clouseau here at Wilders.

Blog here and video .

 

psst, your blog link tag is adding "and video" to the end of the url


that's cool that they're considering re-adding it. i don't personally use any of the more granular settings, just the "notify if a program tries to change system settings" or whatever.

 

Heuristics deal with unknown program characteristics.
But so too does HIPS.
Why isn't the handling of unknown suspicious program characterisics in VIPRE heuristics?

 

You are right.

No need, Get it:
http://www.raymond.cc/antivirus/

 

they're notification settings. think of it this way: these settings give you the opportunity to decide for yourself what to do when suspicious characteristics are detected. by default, vipre handles this on its own. you're doing nothing but putting yourself in the loop when it comes to suspicious executables.

 

Corrected; thanks.

 

My point is the method of detection, not the decision on what to do with it.
Talk about "when suspicious characteristics are detected".
How is VIPRE detecting suspicious characteristics?
It sounds like heuristics to me, m0unds.

 

Prompting or not prompting is self-evident.
I mean, a user either checks the box or leaves it blank.
I thought we were having a discussion about whether or not VIPRE uses heuristics... which I am maintaining it appears to me that they do.
Ignore vs Prompt isn't in question.
My apologies if I have contributed to the confusion.

 

they absolutely use heuristics, i was under the impression we were talking specifically about the setting under handling unknown programs enabling or disabling heuristic detections, which isn't the case. sorry as well. darned internet discussions.

 

I do now understand your point, m0unds.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that disabling the setting I notated in the above screenshot does not impact whether or not heuristics are used. You are saying that VIPRE does definitely use heuristics, but it is going to use them despite how the user configures that particular setting.

Have I got that right?

I hope so!

 

yeah, exactly.

if you're interested in how mx-v works (their behavioral engine) check out the video blackcat linked a few posts back - it's Good Stuff.

 

Thanks, guest.
Avira is comparable to VIPRE in Idle Mem Usage.
Eset is not as good.
Avira and avast do better than VIPRE in scan mem usage, and
so does Eset, but not by much.

 

I would prefer heuristics settings that allow a user to adjust sensitivity level. or even to disable it if desired. Looks like VIPRE has no such settings. Makes me wonder if I left the default in place, how VIPRE would handle some of the unknown, suspicious programs? Being in that loop makes most sense to me.

 

Just to confirm what m0unds has mentioned, VIPRE does use several different types of heuristics. The Active Protection monitors (handling of unknown programs) are just additional setting to have VIPRE monitor for specific behavior such as modifying certain registry keys. This will prompt for any programs that are either not on our white list or black list when they perform whatever behavior is being monitored. This is disabled by default and removed completely from our next release as it can cause a lot of false positives and makes it easy for inexperienced users to basically shoot themselves in the foot.

This feature is disabled in any of the official tests that VIPRE are included in. We have several other heuristics methods which are used to determine if a file is a threat which do not require prompting the user. While more experienced users often like to tweak these settings for better protection, most of our users would prefer not to be prompted about anything. We're working to make everyone happy regarding this in VIPRE 5.0.