RSSPanda Looks to Speed Antivirus Scans
By Ed Oswald | Published March 16, 2007, 11:12 AM
Panda has released NanoScan, an online virus scanning service that is able to perform a full sweep of a computer in less than one minute. The speed is a vast improvement over current virus scanners, which take as much as an hour or more to complete.
The company isn't giving specifics on how the software works, only saying that it will require a small 400KB ActiveX download. No software is installed on the user's computer, and is hosted on Panda's servers. This would ensure that the signature files were continually up-to-date.
Hosting the signature file online solves a problem that the company said will eventually require a new way to combat virus and malware writers.
"Panda had foreseen that digital vandals and Internet criminals would eventually win the day simply by overwhelming systems with signature files too large to be of practical use, unless something radically new and different were done," the company said in a statement.
Around 600,000 threats will be detectable through the service, with more added daily through the company's 'Anti-Malware Collective Intelligence' platform. The system uses detection of new threats worldwide as a way to keep its anti-virus signature files continuously up-to-date.
This system works hand-in-hand with its TruPrevent technology, the company said, which detects malicious code without the need for it to be in the antivirus softwares signature file.
In beta, the scanner is available for use free of charge from nanoscan.com. It was not immediately clear if the company will charge for the final version.
As for the claims to scan a computer in less than a minute, they seemed to be true: a BetaNews test of the service resulted in a 45 second scan time.
Who here doesn't get that every well designed virus scanner on the planet has been able to do a quick scan for over a decade? It's called scanning the system memory first. I can't name a major virus scanner that doesn't do that before checking the files on the disk (absolutely, positively, necessary to know if you have a virus-laden program just waiting to be executed).
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|I used to beta test for them, unfortunetly the product was constantly telling me was not being fully protected and when i went to run the program to run the item not installed said feature not available. I contacted support about the situation and was told to reinstall. This did not solve the problem, reguardless I've switched to AVG for my antivirus and ZoneAlarm for my Firewall on all my stations.
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|Panda antivirus is grabage. After cleaning several systems up that were installed with Panda, the software faild to keep several common viruses (w32.worms vintage 2003 2004) off the system.
After I cleaned the machines with a diff program I was like "I can't believe Panda could not find and clean these old viruses"
If your running with Panda, get rid of it!
Your not fully protected.
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|If you want scan speed, then F-Prot is your best choice. Trend is also fairly fast.
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|Viruses are more preferable than Panda Antivirus...
BTW this activex applet after finishing the scan, crashed explorer.exe and wouldn't let it restart correctly until I disabled it. Pathetic piece of crap.
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|they need to improve
- the english
Your PC is already being scanned. Please wait until the scan has finished before starting a new one
- Improve the detections. including spyware and adaware, ETC.
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http://www.software-asli.com
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|It ONLY scans programs that are in memory, it doesn't scan anything on the drive. Look at the comparison graph after the scan is done.
Product: NanoScan | TotalScan
Detection: 688,793 | 754,433
Disinfection: No | Yes
Size: ~ 400k | ~ 20MB
Scan time: ~ 1 minute | ~ 5 minutes
Types of viruses: Active | Active + latent
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|Site is down as I write this. Nice.
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|Works for me. :)
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|Ummm...what if you can't connect to the internet?
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|Then you are unlikely to have 99% of viruses anyway.
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|I think he means if the virus has somehow disabled your connection.
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|Well then he'd be fairly screwed with just about every other AV package as well, wouldn't he?
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|Not sure what you're saying there, but seeing as how prevention is the primary goal of all AV software, if you have a virus, then your AV sucks, you're screwed, and Panda is worthless.
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|I tested Panda's antivirus program about a year ago and it disabled the network connection on the computer I was using for my testbed. Needless to say, I uninstalled it (network access resumed) and I told my story to the sales rep that called me. It certainly took a proactive approach to prevention, but not what I needed.
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|Doesn't work on Win95.
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|This can hardly be classed as a negative. Windows95 is approximately 12 years old. The Windows OS has moved on a long say since then.
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|It doesn't work on Vista (x64) (32bit version of IE used) either...
Minimun Requirements
Sorry, but you need to have one of the operating systems listed below.
Operating System
Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/xp
RAM
32 Mb (Win 98/Me)
64 Mb (Win NT/2000/xp)
Browser
Internet explorer 5.5 or later
JavaScript enabled
Disk space
32 Mb
Permissions to install ActiveX
Administrator
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|Surely you realize by now a LOT doesn't work on 64-bit versions of vista/XP?
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|Their standalone software doesn't work under Vista either.
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|How 'bout on Dos & Win3.1??
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|It doesn't scan entire PC, it just checks memory for ACTIVE threats. So if the worm/trojan is not active yet, it won't detect it...
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|Needs FireFox support!
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|Coming in April!
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|Wow, now this is impressive. Be interesting to see how it stands up against things like NOD32.
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|It's detection rates would be interesting to see. I assume it's only detecting viruses currently running and *not* the entire drives.
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|NOD32, nothing compares 2 U!
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|I was thinking the same thing. Tried it myself. There's no way they can tell me they scanned my 325GB of data in less than a minute.
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|"Sorry, but you have to have Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or later to be able to use NanoScan. We're working on it" - nice to know that IE users are proned to be affected by viruses. If I have to choose between NanoScan and Opera I will choose Opera.
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|You can use Opera with Nanoscan. Right-click and select 'site preferences' then in the 'network' tab under 'browser identification' have opera 'mask as internet explorer.' It worked for me.
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|That's the thing. Panda's website *shouldn't* be checking for the browser version. Instead, it should be checking for capabilities. It's great that they're doing XHTML 1.1, but if you can change your browser identification string and get things to work, something's wrong with the site.
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|Took 3 min. total for me..1 to scan & 2 for results.
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