Slashdot Mirror
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
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.