neowin.net

The top dog in the tests was G Data Security's AntiVirusKit

March 01, 2007 -- Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare came in dead last out of a group of 17 anti-virus programs tested against hundreds of thousands of worms, viruses, Trojan horses and other malware, an Austrian anti-virus researcher reported yesterday.

The AV Comparatives Web site, which is maintained by Andreas Cleminti from Innsbruck, Austria, posts quarterly results of tests that pit the top anti-virus products against a dynamic list of nearly half a million individual pieces of malware.

Top dog, according to Cleminti's tests, was G Data Security's AntiVirusKit (AVK), which nailed 99.5% of the malicious code. Not far behind were AEC's TrustPort AV WS, at 99.4%, Avira's AntiVir PE Premium, at 98.9%, MicroWorld's eScan Anti-Virus, at 97.9%, F-Secure's Anti-Virus, at 97.9%, and Kaspersky Labs' AV, which stopped 97.9% of the malware.

Better known products such as Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee's VirusScan posted results of 96.8% and 91.6%, respectively.

Holding the bottom spot was Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare, the consumer security suite that the Redmond, Wash. developer launched last year. OneCare took care of just 82.4% of the malware.

Cleminti also tested the 17 products against polymorphic viruses, those which produce sometimes vast numbers of variants as they try to sneak by scanners. "The results of the polymorphic test are of importance because they how flexible an anti-virus scan engine is and how good the detection quality of complex viruses is," said Cleminti in his write-up.

Only Symantec's Norton AntiVirus and ESET's NOD32 Anti-Virus caught every variant of the 12 polymorphic families, he said. In that test, OneCare placed 15th, detecting every version of only two families, and missing seven of the polymorphic families completely.

Cleminti's report is available online (download PDF).

This is not the first evaluation to give a Microsoft security program a black eye. Last week, for example, Australian security company PC Tools released research that claimed Windows Defender -- Microsoft's anti-spyware title -- detected just 46% to 53% of spyware.

"We are looking closely at the methodology and results of the test to ensure that Windows Live OneCare performs better in future tests," a Microsoft spokesperson said.


Source: Computerworld

AV Comparatives is a good site. Poor Microsoft. Then again, OneCare is just a new born. At least they've started somewhere... 82,40%

Not to be too off topic, but the antivirus programs that took top honours... I've never heard about them before and now I'm intrigued

OneCare... well that's not surprising based on what has already been said about the program, I'm just curious how this would be allowed to happen. I would assume they'd have plenty to test their product against

f-secure owns. But for a new product like onecare by a company that has no experience in anti-virus and ****. Its still a good start.

Took me long to find it. (Well, 1 minute is long to find the real site of the "best" antivirus IMO)
http://www.gdata.de/trade/productview/727/16/

Btw, for people saying that it's good for MS's first entry, let me says that MS actually brought a company of Antivirus and a company of anti-spyware for making One Care in 2005...
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/72600/microsof...-consumers.html

This post has been edited by Nienor: Mar 2 2007, 05:55

Well yes they bought the company to make the software. But its them who are doing the virus finding and updates yeh?

The previous team that was working on the previous software from the previous company with some new MS people to put this together
I simply mean that is not a "new" start...

Ah ok, didnt know that lol.

Anyone ever use this AntiVirusKit? If so, how is it?

No surprise that MS releases a shoddy security product, but that it's that abysmally bad to place last?

to many charts
best antivirus is?

Check the summary PDF? The answer depends on your needs. Not only detection accuracy plays a role, but feature sets too.
http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/erge...summary2006.pdf

I personally use and recommend NOD32 for great detection rates, fast speed, configurability, and frequent updates. That AV also takes the prize as Overall Winner in this test. Kaspersky is often brought forward as having near top scores in accuracy, but it lacks e.g. heuristic scans like NOD32 that can occasionally be useful in very sudden virus outbreaks. I'd avoid anything Symantec/Norton as many agree it has low performance. We also missed good enterprise-scale monitoring features in the Corporate Edition of Symantec Antivirus here. Try AVG or Avast! if you're a home user that can't stomach paying for it.

This post has been edited by Jugalator: Mar 2 2007, 16:12

i use nod32
AVK+ looks interesting..
would you recommend it over nod32?
*nod in hebrew is Fart no kidding..

any way, one care is out of the question

This post has been edited by Namooth: Mar 2 2007, 16:38

The 2006 tests are totally outdated, and the test results are not valid anymore!

Look at the actual test results from February 2007 which just got released, things changed quite a bit:
http://www.av-comparatives.org/
Here are the results from the 2007 report pdf:


As you can see, Nod32 did even worse than Symantec!

As everyone expected