Seven fail Virus Bulletin’s first Windows 7 tests

Virus Bulletin (VB) conducted its latest test in November, posting the results this month. The security research company evaluated 43 antimalware products (product submission deadline was October 28) for the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Professional. The basic requirements for a product passing the test is detecting, both on demand and on access, in its default settings, all malware known to be "In the Wild" at the time of the review, and not detecting any false positives when scanning a set of clean files. The products were pitted against about thousands of unique samples of malware that fall into four categories: WildList viruses, worms and bots, polymorphic viruses, and Trojans.

Just under a fifth of the products did not manage to meet these requirements: 36 products passed the test, leaving seven products to fail. Here are the ones that passed and failed, as well as the reason for not passing:

• Pass: Alwil avast! 4.8, Arcabit ArcaVir 2010, Authentium Command Anti-Malware, AVG Internet Security, Avira AntiVir Personal, Avira AntiVir Professional, BitDefender Antivirus 2010, Bullguard 8.7, eScan Internet Security Suite, ESET NOD32 Antivirus 5, Fortinet FortiClient, Frisk F-PROT, F-Secure Internet Security 2010, F-Secure Protection Services, GDATA AntiVirus 2010, K7 Total Security, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6, Kingsoft Anti-Virus 2010 Advanced, Kingsoft Anti-Virus 2010 Standard, McAfee Total Protection, McAfee VirusScan Enterprise, Microsoft Forefront Client Security, Microsoft Security Essentials, Nifty Corporation Security 24, PC Tools Internet Security, PC Tools Spyware Doctor with AV, Preventon Antivirus, Qihoo 360 Security, Quick Heal AntiVirus Lite, Sophos Endpoint Security and Control, Sunbelt Vipre, Symantec Endpoint Security 11, Trustport Antivirus 2009, VirusBuster Professional, and Webroot AntiVirus with SpySweeper.
• Fail: AhnLab V3Net I.S. 8.0 (one wildlist miss), CA Internet Security Suite Plus 2010 (three wildlist misses), CA Threat Manager (two wildlist misses), eEye Blink Professional (13 wildlist misses, 1 false positive), Filseclab Twister Anti-TrojanVirus (1920 wildlist misses, 2 false positives), Kingsoft Anti-Virus 2010 Swinstar (one wildlist miss), and Norman Security Suite (13 wildlist misses).

The most noticeable failure on this list is CA; all other known security companies managed to pass this time around. The newly released Microsoft Security Essentials got a green light, though given the pass rate, we can't say this is much of a feat.

The next VB test results will be posted two months from now and will be for SUSE Linux, though actual testing will be conducted in January.