Viruscape....A new antivirus on the market?

Hello!

You all are experts so I would ask you if you know this antivirus: Viruscape

I never heard it!

Has someone tried it and know if it's a good or a bad software??

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

This is a new one to me also. I also would like to hear feed back on this one. As quiet a few of you know I am always on the look for "freeware", as I am by circumstance dependent upon it.

Thanks
Wildman

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

Hello BadWolf. I am on the team of the said antivirus program, and am very surprised how you found out about it It has been kept a secret more or less for the last while during private beta testing. The current version online is fairly stable, although, it contains some false positives. We are currently removing these, and should be ready for the official unveling in about a week.

Until then, the version on the website right now should be adequate. We just uploaded a modification to the cleaning engine and the interface which make it immune to the current Nyxem infections (Nyxem did not terminate ViruScape, but it minimized the window, which could get quite annoying). Depending on when you downloaded it, you may want to re-download.

If anyone has any doubts about the product or any questions, I am now registered here and willing to answer to any questions/comments/observations. I would like to comment that although it is not freeware, it is very inexpensive - a mere $40, one time.

Thank you for your interest!

-Tera Innovations, Incorporated Support Team

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

Did you guys buy a detection database from another company to start from, or are you building a database from scratch?

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

We have a large database of samples, acquired by hard labor analyzing other samples. We did some exchanges with other antivirus companies and made some friends and alliances which have provided a great deal of samples. We also do constant research on Botnets and other bad threats which bring in a lot of new samples.

We actually sold our sample base to a large firewall company which turned their product around and greatly reduced their false positives and increased their detection.

I'd say our sample base is comparable to that of the larger vendors, and for the samples we do miss, we have people working 24/7 to hunt down new malware. We have simplified the virus analysis process and a majority of it (tho, not all) is quite automated, allowing a fast response to new threats.

Our definition bases range from old DOS viruses to very new major threats to everything inbetween (including Linux and SymbianOS malware detection, tho, no non-Windows version is anywhere near release yet).

-Tera Innovations, Incorporated Support Team

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

Do you guys by any chance use anothers antivirus scanning engine or is it your own?

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

oh and will you guys offer a free version of your antivirus?

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

Our engine is totally home grown. We have spent almost 6 years developing this engine and we feel as though our work as paid off

Our engine uses an array of scanning methods, making it very efficient and giving it a very low impact on your system. The installation program is under 4 megabytes and the entire program installed is under 5 megabytes (we recently uncompressed the interface DLL which added ~1 megabyte to the actual installed program because the 7zip compression cut off 100kb more than the UPX compression we were using, and packed files in an antivirus program never looks professional).

While running a full system scan our engine usually utilizes under 10% of the CPU (when not scanning archive files [archives and some runtime packed files use more CPU cycles because they are extracted to memory] )

In memory, our only process, VS32.exe, uses around 3 megabytes when the full color interface is loaded. When idle, the process drops down to under 1 megabyte most of the time. The guard is very non-intrusive and it is possible to play 3D games while ViruScape is loaded. (One tester said that he was able to play the Sims 2 while running a full system scan without any major slow down).

Hope this gives you the information you needed

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

As for the free version, we will probably write a tool similar to McAfee's Stinger. As ViruScape has the ability to update every 10 minutes, a totally free version would be too much of a load on our servers. We are right now running at the bare minimum price for operation. Each definition update (for one file) is only around 24 bytes, but this still poses a tremedous load on our server.

We do guarantee, as long as we do not go bankrupt or under a few other circumstances, that registered users will be able to have free definition updates for life, and when we move onto v2, the v1 defs will still be available and updated.

-Tera Innovations, Incorporated Support Team

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

Thanks for great info and i like the fast responces

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

How many threats in database?

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

Threats in the database do not necessarily make an antivirus program good or not. This is a misconception made by a lot of users because most people think 'the more definitions the better!' I could replicate a virus, and made 'definitions' out of the MD5 out of 1,000,000 infections of that virus and say that we have 1,000,000 signatures!!! but.... that would be pointless, as only one definition is required to detect the virus.

Anyway, currently, we have ~172,000 virus definitions in our bases.

Note: Heuristics and generic definitions are also implemented in the scanner, which account for an undeterminable amount of additional detections.



-Tera Innovations, Incorporated Support Team

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

Did I hear heuristics ? WooooHooo . NOD and KAV and Viruscape OH MY
Not that KAV uses them . kind of a take off of Lions and Tigers and Bears ... Oh my

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

I have just installed the trial version of Viruscape. I think the interface is rather plain but a simple interface could be a good thing. And just as TeraInnovations the scanning engine is very fast and I was able to do a full system scan whilst listening to music, surfing the internet and using msn.

However, the engine was unable to recognise the Eicar test file whether it was archived/compressed or just as a txt file. It maybe because that they have no included the eicar test files in the signatures. Perhaps TeraInnovations would be able to enlighten me.

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

Due to the false positive testing, we disabled a good deal of the definitions, in order to not corrupt system files. The currently 'shipped' version is not ready for true scanner/detection testing because of this.

I assure you that you will find much better detection, especially in this simplistic test file, very shortly

EDIT: I just scanned Eicar with an in-house 'in development' version of the scanner. It was detected over here. Do you have another antivirus program locking the file? I do not believe the engine changes will affect this definition.

-Tera Innovations, Incorporated Support Team

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

We have tried to make the interface as simplistic as possible. Some antivirus programs contain complex features which could accidently corrupt your system if used improperly. By having a simplistic interface, users can scan files by clicking 'Scan Files' and they can update by clicking 'Update Now'. It is a very 'intuitive' based interface.

We're having some trouble working on our help file, because there isn't much that someone could not understand

-Tera Innovations, Incorporated Support Team

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

Lol . All I know is that many complain about how hard it is to set up an AV program . They are not difficult . And finally , someone makes it as simple as can be so now , we must complain about how plain it is . lol . Just goes to show that all of the people cannot be pleased all of the time . As far as I am concerned , it is too early to pay attention to the interface as accuracy is more important . The engine comes first . You can always " pretty " it up later if people want it . Keep on rollin'

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

Ironically, we have concentrated a lot on our interface. We have an in-house graphic designer who has really put forth a lot of work on this. The interface is actually substantially larger than the engine.

We are thinking of putting out a 'ViruScape Lite' for dialup users which will contain a less graphical interface and some older (DOS) definitions will be removed. It is estimated that we could get it down to around 2 megabytes and have it still detect an adequate number of samples.

Whether we actually do this, I am unsure. Just spreading rumors!

About simplicity - with automatic updates, automatic scanning, and the guard set up by default, a ~1 minute installation time, no confusing dialogs on installation, and an automatic update+full system scan on installation, I think this is about as simple as we can get

-Tera Innovations, Incorporated Support Team

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

Sorry . I have yet to look at it . Just responding to the last poster on what he / she felt it looked like . Sorry . never meant anything derogatory . Guess I better look at it

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

Ah no, I wasnt meaning to counter anything - was just speaking the truth I agree with you totally

I'm probably just tired - getting late here

-Tera Innovations, Incorporated Support Team

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

Yesterday at 06:56 PM BadWolf makes his first post as a new member asking about ViruScape.

21 minutes later at 07:17 PM TeraInnovations posts his first reply as a new member. "I am on the team of the said antivirus program, and am very surprised how you found out about it It has been kept a secret more or less for the last while during private beta testing."

BadWolf hasn't been back since ? I'm not automatically suggesting something fishy is occurring, but it does make me question this. If i or friends etc had a new product i or friends etc of mine might be tempted to post about it to gain publicity. So i do understand that line of thinking, and as such do not have a problem with it if this is the case.

The product does sound promising to me as it appears to be very light on resources etc. The GUI isn't a priority for me, even though i havn't seen it, but it might be more of a concern for others out there who could judge it by looks alone ! It's been many years coming to market, so can i ask how you've survived this long without a product to finance the operation ? Where are Tera Innovations based, the USA ? I wish you well and hope it succeeds, if it lives up to all the expectations.

Here's some information i've found, including a mention of what sounds like an online scan by ViruScape.

. . .

Partner Tera Innovations officially launches Viruscape! Viruscape, the fastest and most accurate anti-virus engine ever made has gone from beta to public release! ImmuneSoft has been working closely with Tera Innovations and has integrated the two systems together to provide the most powerful enterprise Anti-Virus protection available. Congratulations to Tera Innovations! 2005 ImmuneSoft

http://immunesoft.com/News/index.html

There are several other virus scans.

http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/hijackthis_log-t29110-s15.html

Type: Shareware - Time Limit

http://www.hotdownloads.com/index.php3?job=3&id=75819


StevieO

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

It does sound fishy, but I do not know who BadWolf is. If there is a way to view IPs of the poster, you will see it is not me. Also, if BadWolf posts tomorrow (maybe timezones made him/her already go to sleep), you will see it isnt me

We have not updated the hotdownloads.com page yet because we havent released currently.

Our partnership with ImmuneSoft implements a wide range of network security measures. Their product is a network security solution, and ViruScape is a key component of it, making up their antivirus engine.

Again, I know it looks suspicious, but I was directed here from a friend of mine who posts regurarly at an italian software forum. I did not even find this link on my own. It does not show up in Google either, so, I believe it is just luck that it was found at this time.

-Tera Innovations, Incorporated Support Team

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

We have survived this long because of a team that is really dedicated to the project. Me and everyone else on the team donate most of our working hours to the project without pay. The president of the company works multiple jobs while writing a majority of the engine. We also got financial help from loans which we are working on paying back.

We are based in the United States, although most of our virus researchers are from outside the US. We are legally incorporated in Illinois.

We do not currently have an online scanner, but it is in the works. We are working on an automated process to respond to submitted files to http://www.terainnovations.com/upload.php .
Currently, that form requires manual response which is not always very fast.

-Tera Innovations, Incorporated Support Team

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

IBK and toher experts will tell us more about VirusScape than we can find out by our limited testings.

Software look to be nice but interface is very dark. I would change it to some light color..

Good luck

 

Re: A new antivirus on the market?

funny or coincidence how a one post or low post OP will ask about a new application then the author or someone from development team would just happen to chime in. - opps, I just scrolled and I'm not the only one that noticed.