Clamav

[jdow]

From: "Tim" <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au>
Sent: Tuesday, 2010/April/20 06:00


> Tim:
>>> If you read the reviews of anti-virus software, from time to time, you
>>> will see that none of them are 100% effective.  The last review I read
>>> came to the conclusion that the most effective checkers only managed to
>>> find about 60% of the viruses, and not all the same viruses.  That is a
>>> pretty poor rating - just a bit less than half will get through.
>
> jdow:
>> The last time I ran though a complete rating of AV tools none of them 
>> were
>> as bad as you declare. Please enhance your assertions with facts not
>> fantasy. It makes your assertions stronger.
>
> It's been a while since I last bothered to check up on software that I
> don't run, however "60%" was the effectiveness rating at that time, and
> it did draw (internet) headlines.  Are you seriously telling me that you
> hadn't encountered that?  I'm talking about news stories that circulated
> somewhere around a year ago, if I recall correctly.  It was notably
> surprising because of that low effectiveness rate, even running multiple
> anti-virus software still left a lot undetected.  At the time, it was
> used to sink the boot into the silly notion that anti-virus software was
> enough to protect you from bad software.
>
> From time to time, the figure will change, but there can't be any sane
> argument that they're 100% effective, as it's simply not possible.
>
> I didn't bookmark the info, since I've no desire to go bookmarking every
> tidbit that I come across, but it's not hard to Google search this sort
> of thing, and come across quite a lot of less-than-encouraging info:
>
> http://www.anti-malware-test.com/?q=taxonomy/term/17
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antivirus_software#Effectiveness
> http://blogs.cisco.com/security/comments/the_effectiveness_of_antivirus_on_new_malware_samples/
> http://www.zdnet.com.au/why-popular-antivirus-apps-do-not-work-139264249.htm

Bum reading of the data. All that shows is that some products that call
themselves "Anti-Virus" are dreadful. Some are very good. Here is a set of
comparisons with a selection of products and a detailed methodology. You
can find the tests you want by digging. For a test of responsiveness to
malwares on 100 brand new samples detection was between 60% and 99%
depending on the product tested.

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

It's time to stop this. We're wandering off the Linux malware discussion,
which I suspect is finished.

{^_^}