Microsoft's antivirus detects 4 million infections in first week

Microsoft has released some first-week usage statistics of its new antivirus application, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). Redmond made the program available to users in 19 countries on September 29, and it accumulated 1.5 million downloads in the first seven days -- though, it's unknown how many individual systems are actually running the product. That said, Microsoft does know how many computers are infected.


The software giant says that during the first week in circulation, MSE detected malicious software on precisely 535,752 machines -- and the actual malware count is eight times more than that. Microsoft says early adopters of Windows 7 seem to be the most prominent users of MSE, which seems logical enough, and around one third of those systems are running a 64-bit version of Windows 7.

The general consensus seems to be that MSE is a relatively solid product, and with some 4 million malware detections in its first week, Microsoft's antivirus is at the very least helping some users to keep clean.

Source: http://www.techspot.com

AVG 9 Launches With Smarter and Faster LinkScanner, Free ID Protection Service

The latest outbreaks of Twitter and Facebook worms have once again shown that while antivirus and malware protection often focuses on dealing with threats once they have already landed on a user's computer, proactive protection is really the way to go on the net. The paid and free versions AVG 9, which launched today, include an enhanced link scanner that can handle shortened URLs and analyze a site in real time.

Other new security features include improved rootkit protection, which is also included in the free version, and 'cloud protection,' which will block phishing sites. The AVG firewall has also gotten an update and now makes most of the obvious decisions for the user. In earlier versions, AVG's firewall would often ask users questions that had pretty obvious answers and, similar to Vista's User Account Control, users would simply get complacent and just click the warning away. Thanks to its 'behavioral technology,' the software can also figure out if a certain program is acting suspiciously, even if the file isn't infected with a known virus.

AVG's CEO J.R. Smith told us last week the the company focused on a number of key issues in this new version: keeping pop-ups down, improving the scanning speed and keeping memory usage to a minimum so that the app would also run well on netbooks. In our own tests, AVG 9 was faster than the previous version, though we can't quite corroborate AVG's claim that the new version scans 50% faster.

Identity Theft Protection

Another interesting new service AVG launched today is its Identity Theft Recovery Unity. A free 800-number for users of the paid and free versions will provide information about identity theft and guide users through the process of restoring their credit scores if they become a victim of identity theft.

Mac Versions?

We also asked AVG if the company planned to release any products for the Mac. While the company doesn't have anything to announce right now, it was interesting to hear that AVG has been talking to Apple about phishing protection on the iPhone - a feature that would only work if Apple gave AVG access to some of the deeper layers of the iPhone OS.

Microsoft, of course, also released its own anti-virus software, Microsoft Security Essentials, a few days ago, though while it's a very capable antivirus package, Security Essentials is still a rather basic product compared to solutions from AVG, Avira, or Symantec.

You can go here : http://www.avg.com

Microsoft Security Essentials Lab Test

Full Specifications
Performance	Very Good
Detection of WildList viruses	100%
Detection of AV-Test zoo threats: backdoors	98%
Detection of AV-Test zoo threats: bots	97%
Detection of AV-Test zoo threats: Trojan horses	98%
Detection of AV-Test zoo threats: worms	99%
Heuristic detection with two-week-old signatures	52%
Heuristic detection with four-week-old signatures	44%
Spyware detection: password stealer	97%
Spyware detection: banking-info stealer	91%
Adware detection	93%
Successful cleanup of malware (removal of all active components)	100%
Rate of false positives	0.00%
Scan speed (upon accessing a 741MB file; in seconds)	77
Design score	Very Good
Phone support	None
Online support	Online forums

An effective but somewhat slow utility, Microsoft Security Essentials will be a solid contender when it comes out of beta around the end of 2009.

Microsoft has a new free antivirus utility coming to replace its now-defunct OneCare suite. And while it was still in beta as of this writing, Microsoft Security Essentials shows much promise: In our tests it was decent at detecting malware, particularly in proactive tests that simulate the handling of new, unknown malware. It took fourth place in our rankings of free antivirus software. The main drawback of the tool, which will launch by year's end, seemed to be its slow scan speed.

Since Microsoft says the beta tool is feature-complete and simply undergoing fine-tuning now (and since it had a limited public beta release in early summer), we decided to evaluate it alongside other free antivirus software for our recent roundup. Keep in mind, though, that its performance may change before its final release.

One thing we hope will change is its relatively poky scan speed. It was the slowest in our on-access scan test, which judges how quickly scans run when you copy, open, or save files. The app's Dynamic Signature Service may account for some of that: When Security Essentials sees a potentially malicious file that doesn't match known malware, it contacts Microsoft servers for additional analysis. The feature likely affords greater protection owing to the use of the latest signatures online, but it may also introduce some delay if Security Essentials has to wait for a response.

The app's ability to detect and block malware was neither especially good nor particularly bad. Its 97.8 percent overall detection rate put it in fourth; but it did well in proactive tests, which use two- and four-week-old signature databases to simulate how well a program detects new, unknown malware. Its results of 52 percent and 43.8 percent, respectively, were second only to those of the top-ranked Avira AntiVir Personal, our overall winner.

Microsoft's program put up no false positives (flagging of benign software), and it got a near-perfect score overall in detecting and cleaning rootkits and malware infections. It detected and disabled every infection, and although it left behind several changes to the Registry and other areas (as every free app did), they couldn't cause further harm.

Security Essentials has a pleasing interface, is simple to use, and has appropriate defaults. Its warning pop-ups let you deal with an issue quickly or dig in for details. If Microsoft can improve the detection rate a bit--and rev up the scan speed more than a bit--before the program's final release, Security Essentials could turn out to be a real contender in the free antivirus arena.

Source : http://www.pcworld.com