RSSOneCare Fails Second Antivirus Test
By Ed Oswald | Published March 6, 2007, 12:34 PM
Windows Live OneCare has once again come up with a failing grade, as it was disclosed Monday the program had not passed a virus test by the AV Comparatives organization.
The failure means that Microsoft will not receive any type of certification from the group. It was the only antivirus program to fail - two others received a "standard" rating, and 14 received either an "advanced" or "advanced+" rating.
According to the results, OneCare detected 82.4 percent of the 500,000 viruses it was subjected to, far worse than any of its major competitors. The next closest was a program called "Dr. Web," which scored an 89.3 percent rating.
Leading the pack were G DATA Security's AntiVirusKit at 99.5 percent, AEC's TrustPort at 99.4 percent, and AVIRA's AntiVirus PE Premium at 98.9 percent. Worse yet for Microsoft, the application failed to receive certification as it missed the minimum requirements.
This was the second test Windows Live OneCare has failed within a month. In February, Virus Bulletin refused to allow Microsoft to carry the VB100 logo because it could not detect 100 percent of a selected battery of common "in the wild" viruses.
Microsoft said it would provide further information on the review of its software at the time, however as of Tuesday, it yet had to provide an explanation of OneCare's poor performance.
One of OneCare's biggest faults was its detection of polymorphic viruses. This means that viruses that change their configuration likely have a good chance of making it through the antivirus software's safety net.
The Redmond company says it is looking into why it failed both tests, and would see if there was anything it could learn from those results. However, it defended itself by mentioning OnceCare carries both the ICSA Labs and West Point Checkpoint certifications.
Other problem areas were script viruses and malware, of which OneCare detected only 67.6 percent.
"One of OneCare's biggest faults was its detection of polymorphic viruses. This means that viruses that change their configuration likely have a good chance of making it through the antivirus software's safety net."
That's where all popular antivirus apps seem to come short, for the most part (though MS failed miserably). It does surprise me that OneCare scored last in the rundown, however. That is pathetic.
As soon as/if they beat Symantec and McAfee, that will be good enough from a business perspective--though Microsoft has the resources and the know-how to detect more viruses than anyone else I would think.
I stand behind Microsoft 90% of the time, but this is clearly a huge dissapointment. Not that I ever had plans to use it anyway, but I'd think that Microsoft could do better--heck, in it's heyday, MSAV did a more than decent job of detecting viruses (we're talking 1993, so things were just a wee bit different back then).
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|I cannot believe how it fails so well at so many things.
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|This doesn't surprise me a bit and this is a prime reason I don't want to use MS bundled software by default.
Other companies has spent years in this field and then MS just wants to jump in to this field and be respected- Not.
I hope they keep failing. Because I am not going to use it and it's just going to show how disattached they really are...
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|Just shows the virus chess game takes a bit to master. MS is getting owned by the veterans and their well-established connections and support framework.
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|They better make this thing free so they can, work the bugs out, so to speak before paying customers find out this kind of information.
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|On-demand comparative, February 2007 results:
http://www.av-comparativ.../ergebnisse_2007_02.php
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|mmmmmmmmm......juicy.
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|On-demand comparative, February 2007 results:
http://www.av-comparativ.../ergebnisse_2007_02.php
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|Trusting Microsoft, of all people, with virus protection in itself is a terrible idea.
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|Haha! They suck.
I will never pay for antivirus software. It's all a racket anyway.
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|Hey! You must use either Linux or Mac systems. Smart move.
Atleast if you took an IQ test it wouldn't come back negative.
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|Is there a really good free AV program? I use Grisoft's free AVG. It's pretty nice but it's free, I'm kinda leaning toward the "you get what you pay for" mentality.
I know NOD32 is pretty popular but does it intefere with gaming at all? I was trying out KAV for a while and it didn't play nice with some games. I don't remember all but I know it didn't like Battlefied 2 or 2142.
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|I have been very pleased with NOD32. It hasn't caused any noticeable (or, I daresay even unnoticeable) interference in gaming or high-load situations. While it did only get Advanced (96.71% detection) this round, it was one of only two AV solutions to get 12 of 12 polymorphic viruses during the test. The latest edition includes rootkit detection as well.
You might also want to give AntiVir a try. The free version is quite ample for many situations and the paid version includes spyware protection among other things. The heuristics are maturing and starting to give Eset's NOD32 a run for its money.
Last, F-Prot 6 is coming into its own. The man behind Eset's days of utter domination has redesigned F-Prot 6 pretty much from the ground up and the improvement is noticeable. Even better is the ridiculous price - $30 for FIVE computers. No other AV company is offering a deal like that.
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|AntiVir, NOD32 or Kaspersky are good choices. I use NOD32 and the only thing I have to complain about is how it hogs system resources when updating; half a minute at 100% CPU is just ridiculous.
AVG, according to the tests mentioned in the article, is crap. But still better than OneCare. :P
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|I use Nod32, but AntiVir keeps impressing. No issue for me on NOD32 system lag or performance. Love the program. It's really something how AntiVir has snuck up. Weird though, a couple of these highly-rated ones I've never heard of. Now only if AVIRA would refine their app just a bit it would really come on strong.
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|Well, to all those vendors that whined to the Govt that MS holds all the cards when it comes to leveraging secret, internal API tools... this blows that out of the water. Having those cards doesn't seem to provide any meaningful advantage. Real, Symantec, McAfee, etc. can all shut up now.
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|Better known products such as Symantec's Norton antivirus and McAfee's VirusScan posted results of 96.8 percent and 91.6 percent, respectively. This is from computer worlds report on the same test.
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|so where does norton and mcafee score on this?
and why does anyone care about this companies mark of aproval anyway?
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|Mcafee scored %91.63, and Norton (Symantec) scored %96.83.
Eset's NOD32 scored a %96.71. (This is the one I use)
These scores are from the February '07 test. I do not know for sure if this is the same test they are discussing above, since they don't give us that info.
As for why people care, I would hazard to guess throwing 500,000 viruses at it is a pretty decent assessment of the products in question.
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|half a million? is that all? :)
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|Yeah, pulled that from the article. Apparently that is all.
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|well i use NOD32 also, but i was just saying, ive never really heard of this test before, not that i can say that i have looked.
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|(I was trying to convey sarcasm - my bad)
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|You have a bad? Can I have one too?
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|No, my bad. MINE!!!
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|I didn't want yours, lord only knows where it's been. :p
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|Keep in mind that to qualify for the test the product has to reach 85% detection (you might notice some other missing products which did not meet the qualification). OneCare will be dropped if it doesn't get to 85% for the next on-demand test.
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