Windows Defender fails

[Humpty]

Windows Defender has been slated in a new test that found it could detect barely half of the malware thrown at it during the last year.

 

According to Australian testing company Enex Testlab, in full scanning mode the anti-malware scanner could only pick up 53.3 percent of an unspecified list of malware threats thrown at it during 2006, with the quick scan scoring a detection rate of under half. This contrasted with the superior scores achieved by a number of other anti-malware software, including a top score for PC Tools Spyware Doctor.

 

Critics will point out that the test was paid for by PC Tools itself, which offers an easy way for Microsoft to attack the results. The program has also spent 2006 in an unfinished state and was only released for XP in October of 2006, which one might think would make criticism of it misleading and unfair.

Techworld article

 

Webroot: Vista?s Defender stops only 16% of spyware

Microsoft challenges the study, saying it is confident in Windows Defender

 

Users who put their faith in Vista's new security features and Microsoft's Windows Defender antispyware product may find themselves under attack from spyware all the same, according to the results of a study by Webroot, a leading antispyware vendor and Microsoft competitor.

 

On Thursday, the company released the results of what it claimed was a two-week study of Windows Defender that showed the product missed 84 percent of a sample set of 25 spyware and malicious code samples. The programs that slipped by were a mix of spyware, Trojan horse programs, and keyloggers. While many were not Vista compatible and simply crashed, others were able to install on Vista systems, said Gerhard Eschelbeck, Chief Technology Officer at Webroot.

 

Eschelbeck identified variants of common malware programs like DollarRevenue Trojan, PeperTrojan, and Playboydialler that made it by Windows Defender. Some of the variants were recently released, though others dated back to 2006, he said. Of the four programs Windows Defender did stop, most were non-malicious adware, he added.

Infoworld article

[Sputnik]

I don't like the current version of Windows Defender - though I must admit I liked it's predecessor, Giant/Microsoft Antispyware.