Which antivirus is best at removing malware?

[Night Hawk]

November 5th, 2009

Which antivirus is best at removing malware?

Posted by Dancho Danchev @ 12:14 pm

Detecting the presence of malicious code is one thing, successfully eradicating it is entirely another.

According to AV-Comparatives.org’s recently released malware removal test evaluating the effectiveness of sixteen antivirus solutions, only a few were able to meet their criteria of not only removing the FakeAV, Vundo, Rustock and ZBot(Zeus) samples they were tested against, but also getting rid of the potentially dangerous “leftovers” from the infection.

More info on the tested antivirus solutions , and how they scored:

The test, including the following antivirus solutions - Avast Professional Edition 4.8; AVG Anti-Virus 8.5; AVIRA AntiVir Premium 9.0; BitDefender Anti-Virus 2010; eScan Anti-Virus 10.0; ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4.0; F-Secure AntiVirus 2010; G DATA AntiVirus 2010; Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010; Kingsoft AntiVirus 9; McAfee VirusScan Plus 2009; Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0; Norman Antivirus & Anti-Spyware 7.10; Sophos Anti-Virus 7.6; Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 2010; Trustport Antivirus 2009, relied on a modest malware sample, whose prevalence is however easily seen in the wild these days.

More at: Which antivirus is best at removing malware? | Zero Day | ZDNet.com

 

[hackerman1]

hi !

yes, this is interesting, but one thing to remember is the fact that no A/V is good at detecting and removing malware.
an Antimalware-program fx. a-squared (a2) is much better.

 

[nkarytia]

For malware removal use the Malwarebytes. It is the best of its kind.

 

[Qdos]

The results affirm what I've already long suspected, which is that Symantec does a far better job of malware detection and repair than many other names. I use their small business edition of Endpoint and have done so for a couple of years now - it's pretty rare that something slips past it.

That said, we all know that no one anti-virus or anti-malware product is capable of being a Swiss Knife of course. It pays to keep an online virus scanner bookmarked for periodic additional use, should you suspect something is causing problems.

On one occasion during the last twelve months Esets online scanner found a minor risk which Symantec missed.

 

[Night Hawk]

You can rate one program over another all day long but the one best defense is simply having multiple layers of protection. I think that is what you were trying to point out there. Qdos

 

[AussieGuy92]

you can't just depend on one program layered sercurity is the best.

 

[gamepro127]

eScan, Symantec and Microsoft (MSE)
Those were the only good ones.

And my own Personal test can help back that up, too.

MSE Blocked 10/10 zero-day malware links! Good job!
Symantec Blocked 20/20 Zero-Day Malware links, though it DID let in two BOTH were caught a few seconds later by SONAR 2.

Never tested eScan, but maybe will later.

 

[MSMVP]

i do not know who is best,but i like avast! home edtion which is free best

 

[Night Hawk]

The thing to note about the article there is that there are different types of malwares to start with. Data miners, tracking "cookies", trojan downloaders, and other types of "bugs" fall into a different catagory then viruses. Even there you will find various types as well.

From the time the RCs went on having 5 sata drives in plus usb flash drives a full sweep prior to seeing the retail Ultimate go on and despite all of the various freewares, sharewares tried out from various sites not one bug turned up. This was all before the MS Essentials became availble.

The 3 main programs during that time were AVG 8.5 with the IE security toolbar which sounded an alert on a few sites, Spyware Terminator(not mentioned), and a recent new program System Protect(same co as ST). Probably the two items that did the most were the security toolbar on IE 8!

 

[frontech]

I am sure Malwarebytes and Microsoft's MSE can solve most of the problems?

 

[Night Hawk]

Hello frontech Welcome to the Se7en Forums!

Have you compared Malwarebytes against several other removers? When that was done here by first running Malwarebytes late in 2008 it was followed right after with the ST program mentioned before.

Guess which one found what the other one missed? The ST program still in use throughout the betas, RCs, and now the retail 7. Sooner or later another program will come along that may just find things ST missed meaning that will have to go!

That's life in the pc world! The next new bug that does get through will be the one that changes your mind every time!

 

[joel406]

The Best layerd setup is ESET With Malwarebytes, a-squared, superantispyware & IObit.

Most are free but I bought Malwarebytes as well.

Nothing gets past that combo.

 

[zteardrop]

NIS 2010 is the best, and the results prove it.

 

[Qdos]

There's also nothing better than having a clean backup image, and not solely relying on any anti-malware or anti-virus product

 

[Night Hawk]

Until the next new bug comes along... then :mad2: "program let me down."

 

[Qdos]

Until the next new bug comes along... "program let me down."

I use Acronis TI, which doesn't fluke out. I keep backups for every machine in various states, spanned across an entire network. If something goes down it's a matter of 15 minutes to effect repairs - and only a little more even if a hard drive has physically failed.

Why Acronis? Because each release still supports working with backup files made with earlier releases - whereas I'm not convinced some other products are as dependable! (Not naming names of course...)

As a result I spend almost zero time 'down' due to malware/viral issues, and if something should happen to impact then Acronis will save my a$$ every time, because I keep duplicated or triplicated archivage.

 

[joel406]

Acronis is a must have. I also keep multiple images of every system onsite(11).

The 2010 version is awesome it completly imaged my main system in 6 minutes.

It will also save your image as a Win 7 backup or convert a .tib to a Win 7 backup or vise versa.

 

[Night Hawk]

Until the next new bug comes along... "program let me down."

I use Acronis TI, which doesn't fluke out. I keep backups for every machine in various states, spanned across an entire network. If something goes down it's a matter of 15 minutes to effect repairs - and only a little more even if a hard drive has physically failed.

Why Acronis? Because each release still supports working with backup files made with earlier releases - whereas I'm not convinced some other products are as dependable! (Not naming names of course...)

As a result I spend almost zero time 'down' due to malware/viral issues, and if something should happen to impact then Acronis will save my a$$ every time, because I keep duplicated or triplicated archivage.

Almost zero time? I have a 0% downtime ratio here due to not allowing any bugs to get on in the first place. In fact I have to go out and look for bugs just to test the effectiveness of the programs used here!

For imaging softwares another one besides Acronis is found in the free programs for 7 sticky. http://www.sevenforums.com/software/92-free-great-programs-windows-7-a.html

You scroll down the list until you reach the one for Macrium Reflect. Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

The article there sums things up a bit more correctly with:

prevention is always better than the cure, which in terms of malware means operating on an up-to-date operating system, that’s also free of third-party application and browser plug-in vulnerabilities,