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Antivirus effectiveness report: Microsoft Security Essentials behind its peers

Subject: General Tech | May 4, 2011 - 05:28 PM |
Tagged: mse, Malware, antivirus

One of the major drawbacks of having general purpose computation devices is malware. Your computers are designed to manipulate and store instructions and information and they do that amazingly. Your computers, however, cannot tell who gave what instruction; they follow a set of instructions until it links to another, which they follow, ad infinitum. When someone who wants to use your computer can get their series of instructions run by your computer: that is when you got a problem.

Antivirus software is designed to detect when a bundle of bits on your computer could translate to a likely attack. The big question is how effective are each antivirus package at doing just that.
 
MSE.png
Oh is it reeaaaalllllyyy?
 
The firm AV-test.org tests antivirus software and assigns it with a score based on various factors. They recently published their findings for this quarter and found Microsoft Security Essentials was the second-least effective at preventing infections from occurring according to their scoring metric. Their report (PDF) shows that while Microsoft is effective at blocking recent malware it has difficulty with 0-day attacks.
 
Despite the ranking it should be noted that antivirus software should be just a guard looking over your shoulder monitoring what you do. Keep your computer and all programs on it that receive data up to date, be careful of what you run, and keep a minimum number of ports forwarded to your PC. Then and only then will an Antivirus package help protect you against what is left.
 
Lastly, if you happen to suspect that your computer has an infection: back up your data, reinstall your operating system, and enjoy a speedy virus-free computer. That method is free and more effective than hoping an Antivirus package reversed all the damage the virus did because you have no method of knowing otherwise.
Source: av-test.org

Android is number one in China ... at getting an infection

Subject: General Tech | April 15, 2011 - 11:56 AM |
Tagged: Virus, Malware, China, Android

"Android handsets used in China accounted for 64.1% of global virus/malware attacks in the first quarter of 2011, according to China-based mobile security solutions provider NetQin Mobile.

There were 2.53 million Android handsets infected by viruses or malware around the world during the first quarter, and most were in China due to the popularity of white-box Android handsets in the country, NetQin indicated. US ranked second with 7.6%, followed by Russia with 6.1%, India with 3.4%, Indonesia with 3.2%, Hong Kong with 2.7% and UK with 2.1%. In the first quarter, there were 1,014 new malware items and 101 new viruses, NetQin said.

Of the infected Android handsets globally, 57% were through downloading applications from Android Market, followed by using unbranded handsets with 17%, downloading applications from WAP or www. websites with 14%, using Bluetooth with 7% and using memory cards with 3%, it said.

A breakdown of the attacks by Android version shows that 1.6 and previous versions accounted for 5%, 2.1 34%, 2.2 45% and 2.3 16%."

InfectedAndroid.jpg

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Source: DigiTimes

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