PC help and news website raymond.cc has published an amateur test which results we do not want to keep quiet about. For the test two sets of first 500 and then 5000 samples consisting of almost two years old Malware files were created and 29 different products had to prove how many pests they could detect.

The 500 samples strong first set’s winner is Emsisoft Anti-Malware with a clean 100% detection – just Avira was able to detect all the threats aswell, while all the other products detected 9x% or even less.

Obviously the 5000 samples strong set 2 was more difficult for the security programs, as none was able to detect 100% here. But again Emsisoft Anti-Malware achieved the best result with 99.72%, in front of Avira Premium (99.22%), Twister (99%) and Kaspersky (98.48%). Surprisingly some very well known programs showed really bad performances like Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware (3%) or Ad-Aware (58.44%).

Thanks for this very interesting test where once again Emsisoft Anti-Malware proved it is the current number one in Malware detection. Read the complete article with all the results here.

Again the independent testing organisation PC Security Labs reviewed 30 famous security products, including Emsisoft Anti-Malware. The platform for this test was Windows XP SP3 Professional Simplified Chinese, comparing the On-demand scanners of the contestants with default settings. 1004 samples were used this time, representing the top threats in China.

For the first time since a longer period, Emsisoft Anti-Malware did not place first in a detection test, but second out of 30 is still a very good result.

The top 15:

The complete results and more detailed information can be found here.

The brand new released Emsisoft Anti-Malware 5.0 has been tested to meet all of the technical requirements to be Compatible with Windows® 7.

“Compatible with Windows 7” software:

• Is tested for compatibility and reliability on Windows 7.
• Passed Microsoft designed tests to minimize the possibility of crashes, hangs, and reboots.
• Represents a commitment that the product will continue to work over the life of Windows 7.
• Meets privacy standards set forth by the Anti-Spyware Coalition.
• Installs cleanly and reliably.
• Eliminates unnecessary reboots.
• Ensures compatibility with Windows 7, both 32-bit and 64-bit editions.

It’s been the first time for Emsisoft Anti-Malware to participate at the Virus Bulletin VB100 comparative. They have tested Anti-Malware 5.0 Beta, which had some troubles during onAccess scan test, so VB decided to test only the scanner capabilities. Badly, it was not enough to get the VB100 award, but the detail test results are remarkable:

On demand scan:

• Wildlist: 99.95% (actually a bunch of virut replications were not detected)
• Worms & bots: 99.81% (rank 4 out of 60)
• Polymorphic viruses: 78.59%
• Trojans: 98.29%
• False positives: 1

Reactive and proactive (RAP) detection:

• week-3: 99.13%
• week-2: 99.42%
• week-1: 97.92%
• Reactive average: 98.72% (that’s the best score of all 60 tested products!)
• Proactive week+1: 71.30%
• Overall average: 91.87%

The MalwareResearchGroup has tested 15 well known antivirus products in April 2010. Objective of this test was to compare the on demand scanner capabilities of the participants with 259,694 malware samples that have been collected 60% in the last 3 months, and 40% in the 3 months before.

Here are the test results:

a-squared Anti-Malware and Online Armor ++ are sharing the first place and had exactly the same results. Which was expected, because both products are using the same scanner technology. Realtime analysis components like the behavior blocker of Anti-Malware had not been tested.

Check out the full report describing the test methodology in detail.

A private malware geek called “unbreakable06″ did a great youtube video review of Anti-Malware 4.5 showing how it catches live malware infections. All 20 samples were detected.

Interesting side note: 5 of the 20 tested files were new and unknown to the signature based detection, but the behavior blocker cought all of them!

We once more got an award from the Asian experts at PC Security Labs. Emsisoft Anti-Malware achieved the best overall performance in detecting viruses in the year 2009!

Both the static signature and dynamic behaviour analysis tests were taken into account – with a great total detection rate of 99,96% we got the PCSL Excellent Award 2009.

Excerpt of the results:
1) Emsisoft 99,96%
2)  TrustPort 99,90%
3) Kaspersky 99,84%
4) GDATA 99,83%
5) Sophos 99,67%
6) F-secure 99,61%
7) Panda 99,59%
8) Microsoft 99,57%
9) Jiangmin 99,48%

A few days before Christmas the Malware Research Group published a new test measuring the effectiveness of five full Anti Malware / Anti Virus and two Anti Malware / Anti Spyware products.

The reviewed products:

a-squared Anti-Malware 4.5.0.27
AntiVir Premium 9.0.0.452
Bluepoint Security 1.0.0.83
Hitman Pro 3.5.3 Build 80
Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware 1.42
Prevx 3.0.5.23
SUPERAntiSpyware Professional 4.31.1000

As test systems a freshly installed Windows XP with Service Pack 3 and all updates was used. With cloned images including Internet access every program got its own seperate Windows with all real time protection features being enabled and of course the lates updates. A folder containing 1000 different Trojans, Backdoors, Worms, Rogues, Spyware and Viruses then was scanned by right clicking it. Those samples had a maximum age of one month.

Result of the on demand test:

Note: Hitman Pro uses signatures from multiple programs, including a-squared

For the infected system rescue test again Windows Xp with Service Pack 3 was used. The tested programs were installed with standard options and deactivated real time protection here. Then 15 malware samples were executed individually, with the system being rebooted after each execution, until all fifteen samples had been executed. Now the system was scanned with each program. The result of the detection / cleaning rate could be measured by differences between snapshots of the according images..

Result of the infected system rescue test:

The failing programs were not able to detetect / remove at least two of the samples. For detailed information please visit the test page.

During the annual European Software Conference, the Epsilon Award is given to the best software of the year.

This year’s Epsilon winner is a-squared Anti-Malware!

That award winning was not only based on our efforts, but also on the massive support of the a-squared Anti-Malware user community.

Thank you very much!

The prize includes:

• A piece of art by an European artist and a winners certificate.
   
• 200 Euro in cash. Emsisoft will donate that amount to the SOS Children’s Villages organization that was founded in Austria.
   
• Press coverage of our products.
   
• Entry to the Hall of Fame which means free full access for the winner only to future ESWCs.

Here’s a short explanation of the Epsilon banner from the ESWC website:

Epsilon is the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet and the Phoenician Word for sun derives from that root. An astronomer knows that there is a constellation in space called (Lambda)-Epsilon which we can see at the right hand side. So the Epsilon Award is a combination of Excellency, craftsmanship and visionary ability. These are characteristics of an outstanding programmer and a piece of true software art.

Donna Buenaventura, a highly respected security software expert and MVP, wrote a comparative review on BrightHub.com:

Which is Better? Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware vs. a-squared Free

Her test results:

a-squared Free won in the major categories!

• Malware Detection – Winner: a-squared Free
  Of 100 malware samples, a-squared Free found 92, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware only 58.
   
• Removal of Detected Malware Samples – Winner: a-squared Free
  a-squared Free was able to remove all detected samples without the need for a system restart.
   
• Performance – Scanning – Winner: a-squared Free
  a-squared Free finished a full scan of the system drive in 29 minutes, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware took 1 hour and 24 minutes.
   
• Options and Feature – Winner: a-squared Free
  a-squared Free lets you run a quick, smart, custom, right-click, silent, commandline and deep system scans.