SOT: AntiVirus Software

[Matt Kettler]

Glenn Steen wrote:
> On 25/01/07, Scott Silva <ssilva at sgvwater.com> wrote:
>>
>> > The free version still includes this statement in it;
>> >
>> >     Thank  you  for  choosing  to  install  the  freeware version of
>> >     BitDefender for Linux Console Free Edition. It can be used  free
>> >     of  charge.  It is fully functional and without any restrictions
>> >     regarding the licensed version of the product.
>> >
>> > I'm not a lawyer, but it looks like it is still free.
>> >
>> Looking at my logs, it doesn't seem to be hitting anything here lately.
>> Especially the new Trojan.Downloader-??? that clam has been getting
>> since last
>> weekend. Even a scan of the quarantined file shows nothing. Even
>> McAfee is
>> getting these!
>>
>> I guess it is time to hit the flusher on Bitdefender.
>>
> Still seems to be on par with mcafee here.... which isn't saying that
> much:-):-)
> 
> Cheers


It seems in recent months both sides of the clamav and bitdefender hits have
diverged considerably.

Let's look at some numbers from my system. Note I've excluded "HTML-Phishing"
matches by clamav from this, as that's not something BitDefender (aka bdc) looks
for.


Dec 1, 2006-today:
messages with viruses found by clam but not bdc: 142
messages with viruses found by bdc but clam: 148

Looks like both bdc and clam are catching about the same number of messages that
the other missed..



July 1, 2006 - Dec 1, 2006
clam not bdc: 39
bdc not clam: 30

Note that in the previous 5 months, these numbers were MUCH smaller. This tells
me that in the past clam and bdc both matched most of the same messages.
However, recently, that's changed and a lot more viruses are coming out that are
only caught by one of the two.

This might be due to an increase in how fast viruses mutate, I'm not sure.
However, clearly BitDefender is still doing a lot of good here, catching several
things clam is missing.