Dave's mega antivirus test

I know this is off topic but I thought this might interest some of you. I get asked all the time about viruses from my students and clients so three years ago I started doing an IT security workshop with all my classes. One part of it is testing and trying out various antivirus programs. I personnally ran all the tests myself and then the students so we could make sure the results are consistent. So here's in short a hand out they received.


Dave's mega antivirus test:


• Most of the popular antivirus programs found today was used.
• Every antivirus program were fully updated prior to test and set to their deepest scanning settings.
• The exact virus count in the file is unknown but there are over 10000.
• The file contains many types of viruses, trojans, worms etc.
• Scans were done on a P4 2.8c with Windows XP pro sp2.

Antivirus Viruses found
McAfee VirusScan 8 9883
Panda Platinum Internet Security V8.05 9985
F-Secure Anti-Virus 5.41 9976
Kaspersky 4.5 9996
Kaspersky 5 9967
Avast.Professional.Edition.v4.6.623 9757
Bit Defender Professional Plus 8 9953
Eset Nod32 v2.12.1 9689
Grisoft AVG Pro.V7.0.143 9507
Trend Micro PC-cillin 2003 9938
Trend Micro PC-cillin 2005 10084
Symantec Norton 2004 10028
Symantec Norton 2005 10028
F-Prot 3.16a 9386 (+549 ‘suspicious’)
Etrust EZantivirus 2005 7.0.6.7 9580

Notes and comments:

• PC-cillin 2005 found the most viruses, AVG pro, EZ AV and F-prot found the least…
• Norton is ironic, much like viruses, it brings down to it’s knees even the fastest computers!
• Nod32 and F-prot where the fastest scanners, AVG was the slowest

Verdict: Although none of the Antivirus was perfect, some did stand out from the pack for their scanning ability, performance and ease of use.

Kaspersky 5: The tests revealed that when it comes to Trojans, exotic and rare viruses, Kaspersky is the leader of the pack. It found some that none of the others did. I ran the test several times and v.5 found less than v4.5 so it’s a little step backwards… The interface could use some improvement.

Bit Defender Pro 8 and F-Secure: Very good all around, they performed well but not great, yet they didn’t have any weak points either in any aspect.

PC-cillin 2005: It found more than any of the other antivirus programs; it performs very well but is a bit slow when scanning.


So there you have it, hope this makes your computers a bit more virus free!

How did the free online scanners stand up to this test?

Trend Micro's Housecall
PandaScan

And the other free for personal use which is Avast.

Thanks for the info.

i guess im gonna remove my norton. im just wasting performance. so i guess i should use kaspersky then eh?

Thks!!

I am a bit dissapointed in Grisofts AVG. I use ver 7.0366 and I never got virus on my pc. Therefor I am a bit choked in the number of virus deteced vs the others.

But I agree on the part saying AVG was the slowest scanner - You better believe it!

Thanks, thats a cool mega antivirus test.

Something I've learned from Norton as well about it slowing down the entire PC. One of the first things I'll do if I'm working on someone's PC is rip out Norton and put one of the free AVs on their computer.

Agreed, norton on an older computer system is a huge drain on resources. Simply uninstalling Norton and replacing it with a different AV product makes people think you gave them a computer uprgade because they can see the performance difference.

Mind if I pop this into Internet, Networking and Security?

Sure, move it to a more appropriate thread if you want...

You know it never even crossed my mind eaglescouter, I should've included some free online scans. I will try them out for sure and post the results.

AVG is overated in my opinion, people talk to me all the time about it, but it's not that great actually, perhaps because the free version is very popular.

And it's true that norton slows down a computer like no other, even fast brand new ones!

Me I was personnally suprised with PC-cillin, it's been finding the most viruses ever since I started this test.

Personnally, I use Kaspersky, not the best interface, but it's real good at finding stuff the others can't, especially with trojans when I clean up someone's computer.

Glad to see some of you found it interesting. ¦¬) People always love it when I teach that class, most people don't know anything about them, even alot of IT techs!

well. after a long time of using norton, i am making the switch to kaspersky... i'll just give away my norton or something...

Thats good to know. I personally used to use Panda, but lost some faith in it. Then used to kerpasky and lost it when I reinstalled windows. SO tried AVG, personally I love it. I am surprised it did so badly, because from what I have tested on other people PCs AVG has done the best. I had Norton but as your results said it just seemed bloated to me. Anyway for now, think I will stick with AVG since I have 7 with the firewall and don't feel like switching. In the future though I will check out some others. One other thing, there is no way by any chance you have the virus file do you? Or one filled with ad-ware/spy ware? Thanks

How did Avast do?

It got 9757 compared to AVGs 9507 and Pc-Chillins 10084. So I would say about middle, the list up top says.

I was wondering about the speed and resources it uses. Like the notes he made on Norton.

Pretty awesome stuff Dave, I love when people test stuff like this! Most useful stuff there is, hard evidence.

If I read the original post correctly, these were manual scans using various Antivirus products. If you are running such a scan, you should expect high cpu usage / resources. So what if Norton/Symantec uses more. If you are doing a scan, you shouldn't be doing anything else, like trying to burn a cd, surf etc. Have you looked at your resources when running an Adaware or Spybot scan? Your cpu is pegged. Does that make them bad, because they use so much resources?

"sir_LOIN
And it's true that norton slows down a computer like no other, even fast brand new ones!"

How did you come to this conclusion?

Great comparison. I recently switched from AVG to Eset NOD32 and found it to be much faster when scanning and uses less resources. I am going to try Kaspersky on my other PC.

jajmon, Norton eats up ressources and slows any computer down whatever you are doing and especially of course when you are scanning, obviously. I've seen so many computers run so slowly because of it that I lost count! Many times I uninstalled it and installed another AV instead and the people were amazed by how faster their computer suddenly got...

I have just tested some free online scans as eaglescouter suggested:

Bit Defender online 9958
Kaspersky online scan 10312
Panda Activescan online 9969
Symantec Online Scan 9748
Trend Micro Housecall online 9978
Mcafee Freescan 49 (stops after a few files)
Avast online scanner Scans only files under 512kb
F-Secure online scan Crashed
Computer associates Etrust online scan Crashed

The amazing thing is that the Kaspersky online scan is my new champion, it found more than any other including all the destops antivirus! This is just weird, I ran it on two of my computers and I got the same results. Weird! Bad thing is that it only scans, it doesn't allow you to remove them.

The best free online scan in my opinion the the Trend Micro PC-cillin online scan, it found alot, was leaps and bounds faster to install and scan then almost all the others and it alows you to remove them after, it also allows you to scan only what you want, be it a file, folder, hard drive or whatever.

The others either took an eternity to scan, didn't allow removal, didn't give choice of what to scan or just plainly crashed. In their defense I think it's simply because my virus file once unzipped is over 50mb with over 10000 files in it, so it's pretty big for a browser activeX scan....

Oh and if any of you doubt my results, I've taken screenshots of all the end results! Or better yet, try this yourself, see how long it'll take you to do all this! lol

i use Symantec Anti V for work - i just tried out Kaspersky and i like it - Norton Anti V is a resource hog, what i hate is when you start the program from the sys tray or /programs it takes for ever to start up!!!

I recently switched to PC-Cillin Internet Security 2005 (includes antivirus, firewall, etc, see: http://www.trendmicro.com/en/products/desktop/pc-cillin/evaluate/overview.htm). If any of you read Maximum PC - it actually got the highest rating of any antivirus program they reviewed.

So far I have been pretty impressed, it is extremely feature rich - it can actually be a little overwhelming (Particularly when you are messing with firewall and network security components, which they did very well).

The virus component performs very well - I haven't noticed ANY performance hit (which is impressive, at least to me) and it takes about 20 minutes to do a full scan (I have a slow laptop hard drive, about 30 gig worth of files on it -

They also have some outbreak alert "early warning" features which again are pretty cool. It also tracks and monitors for network virii (IE if one of the machines on your network gets a worm and starts trying to broadcast it out) - when it detects such a situation it will actually halt network traffic on your machine, very darn nice.

So far I love it - I have the full 2005 suite and it cost me $49.95 USD, they also have a 3-PC version for $89.95 USD.

For machines I don't care too much about (like crunchers that sit in a corner) - I do still use AVG. I was pretty surprised to see how poorly it did, guess I'll be finding a different antivirus suite for them

Enk

a few questions:

1. How/Where did you get that many viruses into a file without the FBI getting onto you?

2. Can you do the same test only using the 'quickscan' options? I'd like to see if this had any effect on the scores.

3. Can someone sticky this? this is a good thread, and one of the best i've seen in the war on which Antiviral is the best.