Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 4:10 pm
Pikey.... Pikeh
this is scary
this is scary
Sophos used to detect more viruses... that was the rumour, whether it was true or not I have absolutely no idea, but I certainly fail to beleive it was ever liked for it's interface, options and tools - none of them are very good and I fail to beleive it detects more nowadays - not with the experiences I've had with it that's for sure. It's only redeeming feature is it's one of the few AV programs that still supports Win95, if you can even call that a redeeming feature.
No AV is really as good as it should be, a good firewall and good knowledge of what should and shouldn't be running as processes on your PC are your best bet for avoiding viruses and spyware as well as being able to tell the obvious telltale signs. AV firms are far too reactive and none whatsoever are proactive enough - I don't know of a single peice of AV software out there that could possible detect a learning worm/virus that uses self modifying code to adapt itself to avoid/disable anti-virus programs and new anti-virus definitions, luckily no worm has been written to exploit that level of intelligent code yet, most viruses right now are pretty dumb. I can only guess it's because so far, anyone intelligent enough to work with things like neural networks isn't stupid enough to write a virus and release it into the wild but I can only imagine it'll happen eventually and that's when the real test will be as it'll be a question of who can completely rewrite entire portions of their virus detection code fast enough, in the meantime, billions and billions of pounds will be lost by business who rely on the currently unprepared AV programs and don't have proper patching processes whilst those with decent firewalls and well patched machines to prevent any method of remote infection in the first place will be the ones laughing.
^^^