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Microsoft Security Essentials Misses 39% of Malware
Barence writes "The latest tests from Dennis Publishing's security labs saw Microsoft Security Essentials fail to detect 39% of the real-world malware thrown at it. Dennis Technology Labs (DTL) tested nine home security products on a Windows 7 PC, including Security Essentials, which is distributed free to Windows users and built into Windows 8 in the form of Windows Defender. While the other eight packages all achieved protection scores of 87% or higher — with five scoring 98% or 99% — Microsoft's free antivirus software protected against only 61% of the malware samples used in the test. Microsoft conceded last year that its security software was intended to offer only "baseline" performance"."
Microsoft Windows hosts 99.999% of malware.
http://dennistechnologylabs.com/reports/s/a-m/2013/DTL_2013_Q4_Home.1.pdf
Norton Internet Security received the strongest protection rating in DTL's tests, detecting 99% of the malware used
I call bullshit. This seems like a paid advertisement to me. The only reason they used a few undetected ones was because no one would believe anything hit 100%
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
So, either MSSE misses over a third of malware, or use Norton and your computer turns into a zombie with the performance of a 486 running WfWG...
Hmm, tough choice there.
-> I dislike sigs...
It used to be pretty decent, at one point MS was trying to recruit me to work on that since I had a lot of AV development experience; I eventually declined and fed them a few resumes who they did hire, but to get to the point, they have done this in the past at least once before. Maintaining AV is an ongoing and expensive endeavor, and MS just doesn't seem to learn that lesson. It's not something they can develop and then tweak for year after year, they need to have developers and AV researchers on it 24/7, every week of the year. That's not cheap and apparently not their model.
http://www.geek.com/microsoft/microsoft-security-essentials-strikes-out-on-questionable-av-test-1538990/ Geek.com outed this testing firm last Friday for A) running MSE without applied windows updates, and B) accepting sponsorship from tested softwares.
Gently reply
If you look at AV Comparitives, who seem to do pretty good testing, MSE is about 90%. That's quite low (though there are commercial apps that are worse) but the tradeoff is zero false positives on essentially every test.
It's certainly not what you get if you want highest security, but it does a reasonably good job, and doesn't generate false positives, which can piss off newbie users and make them want the AV scanner off. It also updates definitions via Windows Update, if its internal updater has an issue, which is nice for people who won't mind after their AV software.
It's not what I use, but it isn't a bad baseline. I'd sure as hell use it rather than Norton :P.
... based on obsolete knowledge from before 2008 and from expired copies not giving the right protection.
Meanwhile, free software ticks along happily needing none of this BS. Funny that.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I was typing that on a phone and didn't have time to elaborate. IE was only popular when IE 6 was light years ahead of Netscape 4.7 in 2001. Netscape 5 and 6 I did not even bother as websites would not even render correctly. Not because the IE era started on the web, but because there were more quirks in thsoe pieces of dinosaur doo than even IE itself!
People use what is best. IE no longer has the strangle hold because it is not the best thing since sliced bread anymore.
In 2001 through 2003 I used it with Mozilla, but not since Firefox .9x did I finally feel a worthy competitor came.
By 2004 it was an insecure old awkward browser but not terrible. By 2006 it was a POS HORRIBLE abomination! This is when average Joes started using alternative browsers as techies told them to use Firefox.
MSE now is going bad and I no longer use it just like I no longer use IE unless I am at work. People use what is best and yes a good 20% are sheep but the rest will find something else.
I think MSE came about just like IE (since analogy was brought up) as a better alternative as everything else sucked worse. Norton was worse than the actual damn virus! Symentec same ... McCrappy just as bad. AVG would work and then corrupt your Windows installation, etc.
Now Norton is re-engineered and is a great lightweight and secure again though geeks wont touch it now. Avast is much better and we have Avirri and Panda which are ok and fairly decent for free or low cost.
MSE is ... well old. It is scanner from an older era that does not have the whistles of active protection and sandboxing. Just like IE it became an abomination as it never was great (just sucked less) and became out of date where everyone is going one way, MS is staying put in technology.
http://saveie6.com/
From page 19 of the report:
What is the difference between a vendor and a partner vendor?
Partner vendors contribute financially to the test in return for a preview of the results, an opportunity to challenge results before publication and the right to use award logos in marketing material. Other participants first see the results on the day of publication and may not use award logos for any purpose.
Do you share samples with the vendors?
Partner vendors are able to download all samples from us after the test is complete. Other vendors may request a subset of the threats that compromised their products in order for them to verify our results. The same applies to client-side logs, including the network capture files. There is a small administration fee for the provision of this service.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
I care about the security of MSE a great deal. MSE does what Av should do. It also does it in the background like it should and out of the way. MSE is a program/tool that is outstanding. Surprised to see it come out of Microsoft. If a paid version were needed/required, I'd pay, and I don't pay for Av protection.