Your favourite Antivirus?

[Si Veteran]

Please use this thread as a reference for this topic, as time goes on and availabilty changes, the poll will be updated.

[[M]]

i just upgraded to Norton SystemWorks 2005 few weeks ago.

[Glorious]

Symantec Corp. all the way

585988966[/snapback]

i just upgraded to Norton SystemWorks 2005 few weeks ago.

585989331[/snapback]

Oh dear. :rolleyes:

[Tungsten T]

Mcafee Enterprize 8.0i

[saxondale.]

Oh dear.  :rolleyes:

585989970[/snapback]

symantec corp is pretty good man, light on resources, i use nod32, does the trick.

[Hills420]

I recently switched to Kaspersky from Norton and I like it much better.

[joker999]

i like NOD32 because its real time catch.

Kaspersky dont catch zip files :(

go for it

EICAR Test Virus

its catch by NOD32 yay :)

Interesting, Australia and India (and more its around 4 of it) are high with virus and etc :)

http://www.pandasoftware.com/virus_info/fl...=2&color=F1F8FC

Edited May 30, 2005 by joker999

[digitalslacker]

fprot

[Phoenix56]

@ AOXOMOXOA

Very interesting and I must say, COMPLETE !

For the past 5+ years , I have been trying to find a happy medium with most of these AV programs and almost given up. I gone a few months with said AV programs and did a re-install of my OS's, just to see if there was any differance.

After so many years and learning the 'Hard-Way' , I have begun to notice that I dont venture out into the outer zones of the internet, you know the ones am refering too , the Black Hole's of the underground.

I dont do the P2P trip anymore and the only thing I've come close to that would be when I use QNEXT to share MOD's,Files and other game related things with only 'TRUSTED' pps, I even double check and run a scan on files I think I missed by chance.

FYI, I use GHOST9 alot for backups and I do a complete scan before I do a backup with it. Currently , Am useing NOD32 and another for Email bugs and such.

[neoufo51]

http://www.zone365.com/content/10/96/2

Testbed consisted of 321 Viruses, Trojans and Worms, all for the Windows32 environment, and all reasonably new samples. I don't have any data on whether some of these are zoo, or ITW, but they are all real threats I feel someone is likely to encounter, since I got them off the internet (and i've verified they are real as each sample must be detected by at least 4 AV's for me to consider it). All scanners were installed on a clean system, without any traces of other anti-virus softwares - between each test the system and directories were cleaned, and the registry was sweeped. Each AV product was treated with a double-reboot, one before, and one after installation. Each scanner was set at its highest possible settings, and was triple checked for proper options and configuration. Most products were the full registered version when possible, others were fully functional unrestricted trials. All products were tested with the current version as of 6-14-04, and the latest definitions for that date. Each product was run through the test set a minimum of 3 times to establish proper settings and reliability, the only product to exhibit some variance on this was F-Secure, which had one scan come up less than the other two without any settings changes indicating a possible stability issue.

The final standings:

1) MKS-Vir

1a) eXtendia AVK

2) Kaspersky 5.0/4.5

2a) McAfee VirusScan 8.0

3) F-Secure

4) GData AVK

5) RAV + Norton (2 way tie)

6) Dr.Web

7) CommandAV + F-Prot + BitDefender (3 Way Tie)

8) ETrust

9) Trend

10) Panda

11) Avast! Pro

12) KingSoft

13) NOD32

14) AVG Pro

15) AntiVIR

16) ClamWIN

17) UNA

18) Norman

19) Solo

20) Proland

21) Sophos

22) Hauri

23) CAT Quickheal

24) Ikarus

Heuristics seemed to play some of a roll in this test, as no AV had every virus in my test in their definitions, and products with stronger heuristics were able to hold their position towards the top of the test. Double/Multi engined products put up strong showings as well, proving to me that the redundacy method works, and I think more AV companies should considering double-engines. The strongest heurisitical AV I noticed was F-Prot/Command, picking up only 247 samples with definitions but they were able to power through 67 additional hits on "Possible Virus" indicators - very strong! Norton with BloodHound activated had 30 Heuristical pickups, and DrWeb rounded up the pack with 20 heuristical pickups. eXtendia AVK grabs the number one slot with double engine scanning, anything the KAV engine missed, the RAV engine picked up with great redundancy on the double engine/definition system. McAfee actually missed only 2 samples with its definitions, but picked those 2 up as "Suspicious File", and therefore, scores nearly perfect as well.

The biggest dissapointments for me were Norman and Nod32. Even with Advanced-Heuristics enabled, NOD32 failed to pick up a large portion of the samples. Norman, while finding some of the toughest samples, managed to completely miss a large portion of them! Showing that their sandbox-emulation system has great potetential, but its far from complete.

________________________________________

Actual test numbers were:

Total Samples/Found Samples (321 total possible) + Number Missed + Detection Percentage

Discovered and tested MKS-Vir2004, from Poland. Surprisingly, this one with caught every sample perfectly on Medium Heuristics. Specifically, nearly 50 samples were picked up Heuristically giving it a perfect score of 321/321. However, when I increased Heuristics to "Super Deep", it picked up an addition 10 more suspicious files. Upon further investigation, it was found that it was picking up signatures of hacktool utilities left over in some of the archives and flagging those files. Indeed, this is impressive. MKS-Vir2004 exhibits the most advanced detection algorithms i've ever seen, clearly it only had signatures for 271 of my samples, but through code emulation, it was able to pick up all 321 samples!! It clearly labeled the Heuristically found ones as things as "Likely Win32 Trojan" or "Highly Suspicious Acting File". In addition, its scanning speed was incredibly quick, and its memory footprint was quite small. Impressive! Furthermore, this is a full featured and fairly polished product that appears to update at least once per day, and tech support responded to me within 5-15 minutes on my emails. Unfortunately, it appears to not be available in the US for purchase at this time.

1a) MKS_Vir 2004 - 321/321 0 Missed - 100%

1b) eXtendia AVK - 321/321 0 Missed - 100%

2a) Kaspersky 5.0 - 320/321 1 Missed - 99.70% (with Extended Database ON)

2b) McAfee VirusScan 8.0 - 319/321 + 2 (2 found as joke programs - heuristically) - 99%

3) F-Secure - 319/321 2 Missed - 99.37%

4) GData AVK - 317/321 4 Missed - 98.75%

5) RAV + Norton (2 way tie) - 315/321 6 Missed - 98.13%

6) Dr.Web - 310/321 11 Missed - 96.57%

7) CommandAV + F-Prot + BitDefender (3 Way Tie) - 309/321 12 Missed - 96.26%

8) ETrust - 301/321 20 Missed - 93.76%

9) Trend - 300/321 21 Missed - 93.45%

10) Avast! Pro - 299/321 22 Missed - 93.14%

11) Panda - 298/321 23 Missed - 92.83%

12) Virus Buster - 290/321 31 Missed - 90.34%

13) KingSoft - 288/321 33 Missed - 89.71%

14) NOD32 - 285/321 36 Missed (results identical with or without advanced heuristics) - 88.78%

15) AVG Pro - 275/321 46 Missed - 85.66%

16) AntiVIR - 268/321 53 Missed - 83.48%

17) Antidote - 252/321 69 Missed - 78.50%

18) ClamWIN - 247/321 74 Missed - 76.94%

19) UNA - 222/321 99 Missed - 69.15%

20) Norman - 215/321 106 Missed - 66.97%

21) Solo - 182/321 139 Missed - 56.69%

22) Fire AV - 179/321 142 Missed - 55.76%

23) V3 Pro - 109/321 212 Missed - 33.95%

24) Per_AV - 75/321 - 246 Missed - 23.36%

25) Proland - 73/321 248 Missed - 22.74%

26) Sophos - 50/321 271 Missed - 15.57%

27) Hauri - 49/321 272 Missed - 15.26%

28) CAT Quickheal - 21/321 300 Missed - 6%

29) Vir_iT - 10/321 311 Missed - 3%

30) Ikarus - Crashed on first virus. - 0%

Interesting also to note, is the detection level of the US AVK version with KAV+RAV engines was higher than the German version with KAV+BitDefender engines. Several vendors have free versions of their for purchase AV's, we didn't test the free versions, as it would serve no purpose for this test, but based on the results, none of the free versions would have been very impressive anyway. The term "Heuristics" seems like it should be taken very liberally, as some products that claim to be loaded with Heuristics scored miserably on items they clearly didn't have definitions for. Scanning speed was not measured, as it was totally irrelevant to my testing, and on-access scanners were not tested, as it would have been too time consuming, but considering most products have similar on-access engines as on-demand, and use the same database, results most likely, would be very similar.

Cut through the hype, cut through the marketing schemes, this was a real test, with real samples, and none of these samples were provided to the antivirus software vendors in advance. This is real world, and these are likely badguys you'll encounter, since I got them in my real encounters, and all were aquired on the internet in daily activities which anyone out there might be involved in. (Installing shareware, filesharing, surfing, etc). Keep in mind that with ITW tests the AV vendors have full disclosure of what they will be tested on in advance, not so here, so heuristics and real detection algorithms will play a big part, as well as the depth and scope of their definition database.

585986291[/snapback]

Haha, I use mks_vir 2005. It beats every other program out there.

[Hills420]

I am able to scan zip files with Kaspersky...

[Shadow Dragon]

Well, I'm a happy AVG Pro user, its so low on resources and it catches every virus and trojan, only thing that bugs me is that its full system scan is slow.

Also, I have (unlike others) tried a lot of anti-virus program before going with AVG, at home I run 4 PCs;

I have Norton and Symantec (Norton 2004 was pure crap, 2005 was better but too bloated still and Corp was good but still slow and to high on resources for my taste)

McAfee, I loved the firewall so I decided to go with the anti-vir too, wasn't too fast or too good at detecting, so I didn't reinstall it.

Trend Micro, didn't like the design or the detection, it wasn't that bad, but I really hate it, not sure why.

And finally on my primary PC, I keep AVG Pro.

I have also, used Avast for quite some time and I like it, but AVG just seems better.

And very briefly I used Kaspersky, I liked it but since I had used AVG for such a long time, I didn't really want to switch.

The only major program I haven't used is NOD32 it seems, guess I'll give it a shot then :).

[FiREFLi]

I put other, I use Avast.

Does it suck or something? No-one seems to mention it.. :huh: :(

[Slimy]

I put other, I use Avast.

Does it suck or something? No-one seems to mention it.. :huh:?:((

585992004[/snapback]

it's the first on the list: Avast! [ 17 ] [5.40%]

and it is much better than the results say

[MrBear5587]

Yep...

Just like Norton is much worse than the results say lmao.

Although, how many of the "Norton/Symantec" votes were for the corp version.

[Wrath of God]

Well, I was looking for a anti-virus program when I came in here so I tried out a few. Ran scans of my backup files using NOD32 and nothing found. Same scan using Kaspersky and found 14 infected files.

Still checking out some other scanners but NOD32 is defintely off the list now.

[bfoos]

No vote on the poll but because Symantec and Norton don't belong on the same option but I like Symantec AV 10.

[Koding]

At home I use Symantec and it's never done me wrong.

[Crono21]

eTrust EZAntivirus 7

Best antivirus ive ever had.. and ive used alot.

[devyant]

Definitely Kaspersky Antivirus

AV Comparatives

:)

[JoeBonJoey]

Great source, check out the VB100% Award. Sucks that you gotta register NOW just to view the archives though.

http://www.virusbtn.com/

[devyant]

Forgive me, JOEWARE, but Virus Bulletin is kinda misleading in telling a user the effectiveness of an AV.

Say, if they fail 1 tests out of 100 tests ran for that respective month, they do not get the 100%.

And it pains me to say that makers of most AV nowadays work towards to getting the 100% Virus Bulletin logo more than the focus of protecting users, as getting the 100% means a better profile, leading to more profits.

No offense, just MHO. :)

[Rudy]

i put other because i dont use any AV

[Favorable7404]

i put other because i dont use any AV

586003928[/snapback]

:huh: I use AV even in my Fedora just in case.

[a_witko]

F-Prot - uses ~5,000K of my memory with sheild/auto-protect feature on also. It is minimal, but good. NOD32 KILLS MY SYSTEM; everything jams up - probably incompatible with other stuff I have.

MKS_Vir was the winner in that test... and it's a polish program... WOOHOO! POLSKA! POLSKA! POLSKA! POLSKA! Im polish in case you haven't realised!

[ZZOOzzoo]

I love F-Prot because it is the lightest A/V I've ever used.

NOD32 is also good, because it's fairly light and scanning is very quick.

I voted NOD32 because F-Prot doesn't offer some convinient features such as automatic update.