AV Testing

I took 15 malicious links and loaded them against numerous anti virus software programs. These links were zero day links and were found on various sites on the Internet. Stopped is the number of malware that was stopped by the running anti virus program. Missed means the malware got through.

I have rated the product from worst to best. Amazingly enough, one product was able to stop all threats:

Rising Anti Virus

Stopped: 1
Missed: 14

Score: 6%

Microsoft Security Essentials

Stopped: 3
Missed: 12

Score: 20%

Trustport Anti Virus

Stopped: 6
Missed: 9

Score: 40%

AVG

Stopped: 8
Missed: 7

Score: 53%

Avira Anti Virus

Stopped: 8
Missed: 7

Score: 53%

Vipre Anti Virus

Stopped: 9
Missed: 6

Score: 60%

ESET Nod32

Stopped: 10
Missed: 5

Score: 66%

Avast

Stopped: 15
Missed: 0

Score: 100%

Now I know there are those who will say that Avast scored what it did because it is my AV of choice, but this test was performed without bias at all. It was done with the same links and in the same fashion. I was a little surprised by the performance of some quite frankly.

Also note, these were 15 random zero day links taken from various sites. On any given day, anti virus software may perform much better or much worse than this test.

Cool... nice work... can u post a couple of screenshots though...
It's kinda hard to believe MS Security Essentials did worse than most of the above AVs. It's the most preferred among whoever I know! :)

@ reluttr: MSE has a slightly lesser resource consumption, I guess.

Try giving Kaspersky AV 2010 a go... It works fine on my Sis' Notebook, no issues whatsoever! :)

yeah... agree. Avast + MBAM is a good combo. Windows Defender is useless... :P
But i guess the trend goes... if u have MSSE, stick with it...

Jaxryley said:

If they were really zero day then no AV would be detecting the samples at the time of finding them.

Well, perhaps our idea of zero day is different then. By that I mean they were listed links on various malware web sites found THAT day. These are not old links from weeks ago or anything. These were posted on that day on those sites as active threats that day.

Sorry guys, I don't have any screen shots. The testing was done and no video or screen shots were taken. Screens most likely would have been a good idea though. If I perform a test again, I will try to grab some. Problem is, it is easy to make a product look bad if you really want to, even with a screen shot.

While 15 links is not a huge sample, it is just that, a random sample of links that someone may or may not come across while surfing the Internet.

Listen, I'm not a professional by any means. This test was performed on my main system using Shadow Defender to simply start over again, uninstall the current AV and then install a new AV. After all the testing was done, I had imaged my system using the built-in Windows 7 image backup, so I simply put that image back on to be sure nothing was left behind.

I will add that in some more testing, Avast has not remained perfect (using other links found), but what Avast missed, my Malwarebytes Pro caught, so a layered approach is best in my opinion.