For LinuxWorld the folks at Untangle, which makes an open source network gateway, decided to test popular anti-virals in what it called an AntiVirus Fight Club.
Most of the software flunked. They wanted Brad Pitt, they’d take Ben Affleck, they got Urkel.
“Some of these products are so bad it’s a scam to sell them as anti-virus solutions” concluded Untangle co-founder Dirk Morris.
Morris explained to me how it worked. Some well known virus signatures were run against the programs to test their engines. Some, like open source ClamAV (above), found them all. Others, like Watchguard, missed nearly all of them.
“These are all in the wild, wide distribution viruses,” Morris said. “We figured they would all catch all of them.”
Among the popular Windows anti-virals Norton caught all the viruses, but “it just crawled.” McAfee “missed a couple, which surprised me, some really obvious ones.”
The aim here was to get discussion going. Untangle, which is a gateway, has no dog in this hunt and will work with whatever anti-viral you choose.
“We’re going to post the test results,” Morris concluded. “If you don’t believe us try it yourself.”
One more note. I had some trouble headlining this post. I was really tempted to use a common expletive in describing your anti-viral. Starts with an “s.”
Dana Blankenhorn has been a journalist, writer and part-time futurist for over 30 years.
