AV-Comparatives File Detection Test – September 2015

Av-Comparatives prolific team of writers and testers has released their File Detection Test – September 2015. Nine products received three stars. Avira and BitDefender topped the 21 products in the test.   Their false positive rate was only 0.2%. Other companies receiving three stars, in alphabetical order, were Bullguard, Emisoft, eScan, ESET, Kaspersky, Lavasoft, and Panda.  You can download the report  to see the actual order.

ESET, Microsoft, and Panda had zero false positives The hall of shame award for this test goes to AVG Technologies with a false positive rate 32 times larger Avira and Bitdefender, at 6.5%, (139 false positives).

About the AV-Comparatives  File Detection Test

The awards for the File Detection Test were based on a combination of detection rates and false positives.   The File Detection Test assesses the ability of antivirus programs to detect malicious files on a system. It can identify malware attacks from sources other than the Internet, and it  can identify  malicious files already present on the system.

 “With more than 130000 samples in the test, AV-Comparatives uses one of the largest sample collection worldwide to provide statistically valid results”, according to AV-Comparatives’ Andreas Clementi.

ABC Award for the  File Detection Test

The ABC award (Avoids Being Compared) goes to Symantec. The File Detection Test  is one of the core tests the organization performs. Companies cannot choose which of these core tests to be in. It's all or none.  The ABC award is not part of AV-Comparatives’ test   program!

The document can be downloaded at:    

http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparatives-reviews/ 

The  file detection rate of a product is only one aspect of a complete anti-virus product. AV-Comparatives also provides a whole-product dynamic “real-world” protection test, as well as other test reports that cover different aspects/features of the products.  For those interested, you can easily do a deep dive into individual company’s historical performances on tests or sign up for the newsletter.   Check them out.  Other documents are available for download from the AV-comparatives website  (www.av-comparatives.org ) website.

October 2012 Virus Bulletin VB100 Awards and RAP Averages Quadrant (Reactive and Proactive)

Virus Bulletin has released their October 2012 VB100 testing and published their RAP Averages Quadrant for the April through October timeframe.  Neither test results were too exciting.  No companies going irate and withdrawing from further testing, in all likelihood. 

The VB100 testing was done on Windows Server 2003.  Only 30 products were in the test.  One third of the products failed.  There were no “major” vendors failing.  Emisoft has failed three out of the last four VB100 tests they have been in.  This can’t be fun for their marketing department.

There were three clusters of vendors who scored over 95% in Reactive Detection and 80% in proactive detection.  It’s not even worth eyeballing to rank within the clusters.  These vendors are (from first to third)

1. Zeobit, Coranti (clear winners)
2. Lavasoft, TrustPort, G Data 
3. Fortinet, Avira Free, Avira Pro, Roboscan, BitDefender, BullGuard, Emisoft, eScan

There was definitely some movement from the previous test. Congratulations,  in particular, to those in “1” and “2” above!

The Top 10 in the February through August test

1. Coranti (a clear first among the top 10)
2. Huari (a clear second among the top 10)
3. Tencent
4. Lavasoft
5. BitDefender
6. G Data
7. Avira Pro
8. TrustPort
9. Emisoft
10. Avira Free

Hall of Shame awards in the latest test for scoring below 70% on Reactive Detection and below 65% of Proactive Detection (from best to worst), Commtouch, Frisk, Iolo, Total Defense Business, and UnThreat.  No fun for these companies http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/latest_comparative/index

Tests like these provide  useful information in evaluating the relative strengths of the products.  It obviously wins out over the wisdom of Facebook fans clicking on like!  You can view the  RAP Averages Quadrant chart at

http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/latest_comparative/index

Subscribers to Virus Bulletin's publications have access to more details on the results.

RAP Averages Quadrant

This test measures products' detection rates across four distinct sets of malware samples.  The first three test sets comprise malware first seen in each of the three weeks prior to product submission.  These measure how quickly product developers and labs react to the steady flood of new malware emerging every day across the world.  A fourth test set consists of malware samples first seen in the week after product submission.

VB100 Test Methodology

The purpose of the VB100 comparative is to provide insight into the relative performance of the solutions taking part in the tests, covering as wide a range of areas as possible within the limitations of time and available resources.  More details are available at

http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/about/methodology.xml

UK based Virus Bulletin started in 1989.  They provide PC users with a regular source of intelligence about computer viruses, their prevention, detection, and removal, and how to recover programs and data following an attack.  The Virus Bulletin website is at www.virusbtn.com

 

AV-Comparatives Testing – 2012 Mash-up

The table below combines results from four different tests from AV-Comparatives.  Through the wonders of Excel, I was able to calculate a simple average and sort the results, first by result, and by alphabetical order.  There was quite a range in the results.  Great consistency among the top finishers, though.  Test results used in  the table were from:

• Whole Product Dynamics Real World Protection Test, March through June 2012
• Antivirus Comparative -   On Demand Detection of Malicious Software, March 2012
• Antivirus Comparative - Retrospective/Proactive Test, July 2012
• Antiphishing Test, July 2012

Congrats to the top finishers!  Kaspersky finished no lower than third in any of the tests, BitDefender seventh, and F-Secure, fifth.  I’m intentionally not showing a table of the raw data.  Blogs about each test are available, and the complete tests are on the AV-comparatives (www.av-comparatives.org ) web site. 

AV-Comparatives named Kaspersky Product of the Year for 2011.  Other top rated products, in alphabetical order,  were from Avira, BitDefender, Eset, and F-Secure.  Based on testing to date, there may be some changes at the end of the year.

Vendor  in the table   (listed   for Google purposes) are: F-Secure, G Data, BullGuard, Avira, Panda, Avast, ESET,  QiHoo, Sophos, eScan, PC Tools, McAfee, AVG Technologies, Microsoft, Tencent, GFI, Trend Micro, Fortinet, Webroot, and AhnLab.

About AV-Comparatives www.av-comparatives.org

AV-Comparatives is an Austrian Non-Profit-Organization, which provides independent antivirus software tests free to the public.  Go to the AV-comparatives website for complete details about the organization, the many tests they perform, and to download copies of test reports.

AV-Comparatives Anti-Phishing Test - July 2012

AV-Comparatives has published their AV-Comparatives Anti-Phishing Test, July 2012.  Products from eighteen vendors were included in the test.  All of them were paid products except for Avast who requested that their Avast Free Antivirus 7.0 product be used for the test.  Koule.  The top five products were from BitDefender, McAfee, and Kaspersky, BullGuard, and F-Secure.  These were the only vendors whose products scored over 90%. Phishing is a stinky business, but a profitable one for the bad guys.

Percentage of Blocked Web Sites by the Leading Vendors 

97.4% - BitDefender

97.0% - McAfee

94.8% - Kaspersky

92.2% - BullGuard

91.1% - F-Secure 

Overall, eleven vendors’   products received three stars.  For the vendors better known for their free products, Avast   and Avira   received two stars, and AVG Technologies,one star.  No vendor received this test’s cone of shame designation of “tested.”  The two lowest performing products were from eScan (57.7%) and ESET (58.0%).  574 phishing URL’s were part of the test.  A nice sized sample. 

According to SearchSecurity, phishing  phishing is an e-mail fraud method in which the perpetrator sends out legitimate-looking email in an attempt to gather personal and financial information from recipients.  Typically, the messages appear to come from well-known and trustworthy Web sites.  Web sites that are frequently spoofed by phishers include PayPal, eBay, MSN, Yahoo, and BestBuy.  

The users are typically directed to enter personal  details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one.The FTC recommends that if you suspect you have been phished, forward the e-mail to spam@uce.gov or call the FTC help line, 1-877-FTC-HELP.

How Prevalent is Phishing

In their July report for the    first half of 2012, the RSA Anti-Fraud Command Center identified 195,487 unique phishing attacks – an increase of 19% over the second half of 2011.  The countries that had the largest volume of phishing attacks were the UK (42%), Canada (29%), and the United States (22%).  The US hosted the most phishing attacks, at 60%.  The Citadel Trojan was responsible for 20% of the Trojan attacks analyzed by RSA. 

For people who don’t think this is a business - the cost of a Citadel kit will run you $2,500 US.  However, you'll soon have to be vouched for by a current customer to purchase the kit.  RSA estimates that phishing attacks in the first half of 2012 could have potentially caused $687 million in total losses. 

Vendors in the test -  Avast, AVG Technologies, Avira, BitDefender, BullGuard, eScan, ESET, Fortinet, F-Secure,  G Data, GFI, Kaspersky, McAfee, PC Tools, Qihoo, Sophos, Trend Micro, and  Webroot.  Symantec wanted to choose which tests to participate in.  That wasn’t an option. For the time being, Symantec isn't  in any of AV-Comparative’s tests this year. PC Tools, their wholly owned subsidiary, is, however.

About AV-Comparatives www.av-comparatives.org

 

AV-Comparatives publishes a number of free great test reports over the year.  You can review results from their Real World Protection tests monthly. AV-Comparatives is an Austrian Non-Profit-Organization.  They provide independent Anti-Virus software tests free to the public. You can probably win bar bets over the results, since the most well known vendors are often not the ones with the best test performance.

Virus Bulletin February VB100 Awards - 2012

Virus Bulletin has released their latest VB100 awards results. Only about a dozen companies were in the test. The tests were done on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, hence the smaller number of participants. McAfee, Symantec, and Trend Micro didn’t have products in the text. Products not passing were from Kaspersky (this is an incentive to get you to visit the site to see who passed!). Bravilna to those who received a VB100 award! Hint, three of the vendors begin with an A.

http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archive/test?id=172

VB100 Test Methodology

The purpose of the VB100 comparative is to provide insight into the relative performance of the solutions taking part in the tests, covering as wide a range of areas as possible within the limitations of time and available resources. More details are available at

http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/about/methodology.xml

UK based Virus Bulletin www.virusbtn.com started in 1989. The organization provides PC users with a regular source of intelligence about computer viruses, their prevention, detection, and removal, and how to recover programs and data following an attack. The Virus Bulletin website is at

www.virusbtn.com

February 2012 – Virus Bulletin RAP Averages Quadrant, August 2011 through February 2012

Virus Bulletin has released their latest RAP Averages Quadrant, representing August 2011 through February 2012. The top 10 (some eyeballing necessary):

1. Emisoft
2. Coranti
3. Auslogics
4. G Data
5. TrustPort
6. eScan
7. Avira Free
8. BullGuard
9. BitDefender
10. Ikarus

The top 10 in the April 2011 through October RAP Quadrant

1. Emsisoft
2. Bkis
3. Coranti
4. TrustPort
5. eScan
6. Avira Pro
7. BullGuard
8. BitDefender
9. Avira Free
10. Lavasoft

All of these achieved greater than 90% on Reactive Detection and Proactive Detection. Congrats! There was turnover in the latest test as four companies were replaced in the top 10.

McAfee has to be disappointed. However, neither Symantec nor Trend Micro are present on this grid. PC Tools, owned by Symantec, was. Rising was at the bottom, only because Kingsoft wasn’t on the Quadrant this time.

The relative performance of vendors can best be viewed by looking at the RAP Averages Quadrant chart at

http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/latest_comparative/index

Subscribers to Virus Bulletin's publications have access to more details on the results.

RAP Averages Quadrant

This test measures products' detection rates across four distinct sets of malware samples. The first three test sets comprise malware first seen in each of the three weeks prior to product submission. These measure how quickly product developers and labs react to the steady flood of new malware emerging every day across the world.. A fourth test set consists of malware samples first seen in the week after product submission.

About Virus Bulletin

Virus Bulletin started in 1989 as a magazine dedicated to providing PC users with a regular source of intelligence about computer malware - its prevention, detection, and removal. In addition, how to recover programs and data following an attack.

http://www.virusbtn.com/index

October 2011 – Virus Bulletin RAP Averages Quadrant, April 2011 through October 2011

Virus Bulletin has released their latest RAP Averages Quadrant, representing April 2011 through October 2011 data. The top 10 (some eyeballing necessary) Bkis, Coranti, TrustPort, BullGuard, Qihoo, F-secure, G Data, Kaspersky, Nifty, and eScan. Bkis, Coranti, and TrustPort were the obvious top three. All of these achieved greater than 90% on Reactive Detection and Proactive Detection. Avira and Check Point came close but didn’t make the top 10 as they did for the previous quadrant. Bkis, Coranti, and TrustPort held the top three spots for another quarter. Congrats!

Below is a grid mapping this latest RAP test with av-comparatives.org On Demand Detection of Malicious Software 2011 Test. http://kensek.blogspot.com/2011/09/av-comparatives-on-demand-detection-of.html shortly.

Not all of the top ten in the Virus Bulletin Rap Averages Quadrant. However, there does seem to be a loose relationship where the better performers in the Virus Bulletin test were also the better performers in AV-comparatives.org . Kind of interesting. And, you won't read about the below on either of the two sites. Perhaps a case could be made to IPO these analyses! Or maybe get a free visit to one of the Virus Bulletin conferences.



















What’s with Kingsoft solutions? They’ve consistently been in the lower left hand corner of the grid with around 15%/20% with respect to Reactive/Proactive Detection. They’re down there again. In their case, consistency is bad.

The relative performance of vendors can best be viewed by looking at the RAP Averages Quadrant chart at http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/latest_comparative/index Subscribers to Virus Bulletin's publications have access to more details on the results.

This test measures products' detection rates across four distinct sets of malware samples. The first three test sets comprise malware first seen in each of the three weeks prior to product submission. These measure how quickly product developers and labs react to the steady flood of new malware emerging every day across the world. A fourth test set consists of malware samples first seen in the week after product submission.

AV-Comparatives is an Austrian Non-Profit-Organization, which provides independent Anti-Virus software tests free to the public.

www.av-comparatives.org

Virus Bulletin focuses its efforts in three main areas: a monthly magazine, an annual conference and bimonthly product certification. Virus Bulletin started in 1989 as a magazine dedicated to providing PC users with a regular source of intelligence about computer malware, its prevention, detection and removal, and how to recover programs and data following an attack.

www.virusbtn.com