Think you’re safe behind that Norton Antivirus that came with your computer? Well, think again.
“The most popular brands of antivirus on the market… have an 80 percent miss rate… So if you are running these pieces of software, eight out of 10 pieces of malicious code are going to get in,” said General Manager of Australia’s Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT), Graham Ingram.
The reason why the smaller players are getting better hit rate is simple. Similar to the Internet Explorer vs Firefox syndrome, malware writers would test their code against the popular antivirus and attempt to get pass their detection. So it really has nothing to do with the quality of the popular antivirus, but instead the writers are trying to avoid whichever app most users might be using.
Even though Ingram did not name names, Gartner’s figures for 2005 show that Symantec has the largest market share of 53.6 percent. While McAfee and Trend follows right behind with 18.8 percent and 13.8 percent respectively.
My advice?
- Learn not to download and run suspicious files.
- Switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox.
- Grab one of the lesser known (but good) antivirus such as NOD32, Panda Antivirus and Kaspersky.
- Although I’m personally using the free Home Edition of Avast!, I wouldn’t recommend free antivirus as they might be as big a target as the big names, for simply being free. I use it more as a safety net than anything else.
If all else fails and you keep getting raped by virus and spywares, convince yourself to get a Mac.
Free antivirus program - In need of an antivirus program? Download Norton for free via Google!
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:00 am
Why even spend the money to get a mac? You should just use linux on the same computer. It’s even more obscure and secure than macs are. My brother used to get tons of viruses playing WoW, but under an emulator in linux there is no problem.