Another anti-virus test defeats Microsoft Live OneCare

 

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By Rene Millman

Posted on 6 Mar 2007 at 11:26

According to a new set of tests, Microsoft's anti-malware product, Live OneCare has again trailed in tests against rival products.

The software was only one of 17 products that failed to come up to scratch in a run-off conducted by Austrian anti-virus testing company AV Comparatives. Live OneCare only managed to detect 82.4 per cent of the nearly 500,000 samples the company tested the software against. The software had to detect 85 per cent of all samples to pass the test.

Earlier this year we reported that the same software also failed in a test run by Virus Bulletin.

The latest report found that 14 of the products got an 'Advanced' certification or better, while two, Dr. Web and McAfee, got a 'Standard' certification, only Microsoft failed. OneCare did particularly badly on polymorphic viruses, spotting only four out of 12 samples.

The report's author Andreas Clementi said the results of the polymorphic test are of importance, because they show how flexible an anti-virus scan engine is and how good the detection quality of complex viruses is.

'In some cases anti-virus products scored zero per cent not because they are not aware of the virus's existence but because to detect such viruses with the engine of their product it may be necessary to rewrite the engine,' he said.

He added that anti-virus products with a 100 per cent detection of polymorphic viruses showed a higher detection quality and engine flexibility.

A spokesman for Microsoft said that the company was looking into the methodology and results from the test to ensure that its product performed better in future tests.