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Antivirus applications from Symantec, McAfee or Trend Micro -- the three leading AV vendors in 2005 -- are far less likely to detect new viruses and Trojans than the least popular brands.

This has nothing to do with the quality of the software or how long it takes the respective firms to update their clients with signatures and other malware countermeasures.

AV companies continue to refine their products and most will tell you they stopped relying on purely signature-based systems many years ago. These days they use all sorts of clever methods to try and detect suspicious behaviour but the problem is that malware authors are also very clever. Very, very clever.

The general manager of Australia's Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT), Graham Ingram, described how the threat landscape has changed -- along with the skill of malware authors.

"We are getting code of a quality that is probably worthy of software engineers. Not application developers but software engineers," said Ingram.

However, the actual reason why the top selling antivirus applications don't work is because malware authors are specifically testing their Trojans and viruses to make sure they can bypass these applications before releasing them in the wild.

"The most popular brands of antivirus on the market… have an 80 percent miss rate… So if you are running these pieces of software, eight out of 10 pieces of malicious code are going to get in," said Ingram.

Although Ingram didn't mention any of the leading losers by name, Gartner's figures for 2005 show that Symantec is the clear leader with 53.6 percent of the market. McAfee and Trend own 18.8 percent and 13.8 percent of the market respectively.

One vendor Ingram did mention was Russian outfit Kaspersky, which in the same tests managed to block around 90 percent of new malware.

According to Gartner, Kaspersky's market share is a lowly 0.7 percent.


I posted this because i just started using kaspersky,and believe me as many viruses,trojans this antivirus extracted from my pc no norton, mcafee,zonealarm ever could.
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Posted: 2006-08-16 18:34:29
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or just buy a mac...

fatreg
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Posted: 2006-08-16 18:46:58
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I'm a(PROUD):razz: PC user and have had minimalistic of protection.(All I have is some obscure antispyware) and my PC has never ever been infected by viruses. I;m sure other PC users will agree that the chances of infection are very less if you know what you're doin! (Er..i dont intend to make this into a MAC vs PC thread!)And no...i do not hate MACS...have used them but i simply prefer PCs.

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[ This Message was edited by: whizkidd on 2006-08-16 18:13 ]
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Posted: 2006-08-16 19:11:00
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people who use porn, warez, torrent, dodgy searcheangins and p2p these people get Viruses IF they are not careful

i use

AVG 7.1 free

ewido anti-spyware

and zonealarm free edition

not had one problem yet

(day 3 of a freash install on XP Pro SP1)
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Posted: 2006-08-16 19:52:52
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i used kaspesky and AVG when i had my PC.

kaspersky was a lot better than AVG for trojans but AVG was better a sctual scans.

so i used both!

in addition to the hijack this/ad aware setup.

i only ever got infected if my firewall was off..

and i used most of the above things...

fatreg
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Posted: 2006-08-16 19:59:52
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I use Anti Vir.

www.avira.com

Unlike most Antiviruses, this detects the virus BEFORE your pc accepts anything.

It's all compeltely free, light, and does not slow down your pc at all.
(trust me, I've tried them all)

I love Anti Vir so much that I bought the professional edition for 20 euros (2 years license).

(and I SWORE I would never buy an Anti Virus, that's how good it is.)
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Posted: 2006-08-16 23:08:10
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I would agree with amnesia... I've used it and have found it extremely good. Isn't antivir a german brand or something?
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Posted: 2006-08-16 23:14:00
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yes it is.
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Posted: 2006-08-17 03:35:19
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I always suspeted that the smaller programs had more benefit. My PC-cillin has traked down nearly no viruses in the last year, whereas my freeware (trial) ewido has gotten much more. Can't see any benefit in paying for an extra year.
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Posted: 2006-08-17 09:33:40
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never paid for AV never will free stuff works just as well the pro version ahs utils ull bearly ever use i used to use AntiVir nice software very windows 95 lol but very powerful stopped using it because family just allow all files instead of blocking or deleting AVG blue screens u so its more alarming for them hehe
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Posted: 2006-08-18 02:27:29
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