Tip: Click here to run a free scan for PC errors

Virus Bulletin Results for August

By George Garza on September 4, 2010 in Internet News, Security, Software | Comments { 766 }

BitDefender, one of the most recognizable virus protection programs was subjected to some scrutiny by Virus Bulletin in August. The result was failure. Virus Bulletin showed 15 false positives in the results.

Virus Bulletin gives a VB100 award to a company whose virus checking program passes certain tests.

It detects all In the Wild viruses during both on-demand and on-access scanning.
It generates no false positives when scanning a set of clean files.

The product that is tested must fulfil these criteria in its default state.

The WildList is used as the basis for in-the-wild virus testing and certification of anti-virus products by several working groups like ICSA, Secure Computing, and Virus Bulletin. Additionally, a virus collection based upon The WildList is being used in an effort to standardize the naming of common viruses.

The false positive test results from the collection of known-clean files includes the test sets used for speed measurements, and is subject to regular and unannounced updating and enlargement. A false positive will be counted if a product is considered to have flagged a file clearly as infected in its log or on-screen display.

A false positive will not be recorded if a file is labelled as something other than malware, such as adware, or a legitimate item of software with potentially dangerous uses. All other alerts on clean files will be counted as false positives.

Virus Bulletin publishes its results of it virus tests and this time the operating system in question was Vista Business edition with service pack 2. Here are the results

Virus Bulletin

As you can see Avast did well in the August test, and has done well in the four previous ones, including the Windows 7 Test.

The testing provided by Virus Bulletin is objective in so far as the same test is applied to all of the software that is presented to them. All tests are performed both on demand and on access. The failure to detect a sample from the WildList set, in either mode, or a false positive alert in either mode, will result in a product failing to qualify for the VB100 award.

Source: Virus Bulletin

Wildlist