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22nd April 2010: McAfee update attacks Windows XP system file
A recent update to McAfee security products falsely identifies the Windows XP system file svchost.exe as a virus, meaning that the McAfee program will attack it. This may lead to continuous rebooting on affected machines. The McAfee UK website had no obvious information about the defective update on its home page or support page, although we have tracked down advice on solving the problem from McAfee's Community pages: http://community.mcafee.com/message/125925
31st March 2010: PC World magazine publishes latest Internet security suite tests by AV-Test
A review of 13 popular Internet security suites has just been published by PC World magazine, and includes results of malware protection tests by German antivirus testing institute AV-Test. You can read the report here.
31st March 2010: Kaspersky PURE released
Kaspersky have just released their new Internet protection suite, Kaspersky PURE. This is an "Internet Security Suite Plus" along the lines of Symantec's Norton 360. According to Kaspersky, the new product contains everything in their Internet Security, plus a password manager, file shredder, backup function and data encryption. It also has enhanced versions of parental controls, PC tune-up, and management of Kaspersky security software on other computers on the local network. We look forward to testing Kaspersky PURE and will report our findings here. More information about PURE can be found on the Kaspersky website.
30th March 2010: "Virus removal" phone scams continue
PC Pro magazine have reported another telephone scam in which fraudsters call an unsuspecting computer user and claim to have found a virus on his/her computer, which they will remove for a (large) fee. There are more details about such scams on our website (here), PC Pro story here.
23rd March 2010: Avira Antivir 10 released
Avira have today released version 10 of their Antivir Antivirus program. The most major new feature is the ProActiv behavioural blocking module, which monitors program actions and blocks suspicious behaviour. This could be very effective against new threats that cannot be detected by signatures or heuristics. The feature is currently not available in the free Personal edition of Antivir, only the Premium and Professional versions and the Avira Premium Security Suite. Unfortunately, the ProActiv feature will not work on 64-bit Windows, although Avira say they are working on a solution to this. Version 10 of the Avira security products also includes improved registry cleaning in the event of an infection, and there is an improved interface. We found this to be more modern and attractive-looking than the previous version, although the change are largely only cosmetic. If you have an exisiting subscription for Avira Antivir 9, the program will offer you an upgrade to version 10, which we would recommend. We have upgraded two of our machines (one Thinkpad with Windows 7 Enterprise 32-bit, and one Hyper-V VM with Windows XP Professional). The upgrade installed flawlessly in both cases, though we note that the ProActiv component has to be selected during installation, it is not installed by default. We look forward to seeing how the new Avira software fares in AV-Comparatives' next Dynamic Test.