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.