Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: SpeedyPC on June 19, 2010, 12:55:22 PM
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G'day all,
I'm getting really worried about Avast not keep their Number of Definitions up to speed because it make me wonder why I'm feeling unsafe at the moment, and I don't want to get myself in the wrong idea of surrendering this great service and product by Avast.
I'm having trouble searching all the Anti-virus companies showing their total Number of Definitions so we can all compare, I can only find 3 so far and they are very current today update if you help me find them so we can compare them together that we can fully understand what really going.
Avast Total Number of Definitions total (current version 100618-1) = 2,679,916
Comodo Total Number of Definitions = 4,209,658
Symantec Total Number of Definitions = 7,239,430
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Avast is using generic definitions along time ago and that's why avast have a so lower number of definitions, comodo is still on the phase of restructure their definition to generic. And this took, in fact as you can see their number of definitions is decreasing. Not always the big is the best.
ps.: I only talked about comodo to gave an example.
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Avast is using generic definitions along time ago and that's why avast have a so lower number of definitions, comodo is still on the phase of restructure their definition to generic. And this took, in fact as you can see their number of definitions is decreasing. Not always the big is the best.
ps.: I only talked about comodo to gave an example.
I know all about that ;) I'm way ahead of you
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If you are so ahead away, I don't understand why are you getting worried.
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If you are so ahead away, I don't understand why are you getting worried.
Total number of definitions using the latest generic definitions competition by ALL anti-virus companies, a lot of people are talking and looking for competition and challenging in the best Anti-Virus latest generic definitions.
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If you are so ahead away, I don't understand why are you getting worried.
Total number of definitions using the latest generic definitions competition by ALL anti-virus companies, a lot of people are talking and looking for competition and challenging in the best Anti-Virus latest generic definitions.
That's how it would be, it's no have competition is the competition that moves the software further and further. But again, creating generic definitions take allot of time and I will give the same example as before, in comodo their database is not all generic, if fact I will say not even half is generic, only than we can compare both.
Other things is that Av vendors can count definitions differently from others. And again it's difficult to compare products.
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Also take a look at the update interval.
The following overview shows the update frequency of the different anti-virus vendors..
http://www.av-test.org/numbers.php
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Also take a look at the update interval.
The following overview shows the update frequency of the different anti-virus vendors..
http://www.av-test.org/numbers.php
De Hollander thank you for this link may I ask how good is this site keeping up to date ???
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Other things is that Av vendors can count definitions differently from others. And again it's difficult to compare products.
I understand mow ;)
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Also take a look at the update interval.
The following overview shows the update frequency of the different anti-virus vendors..
http://www.av-test.org/numbers.php
De Hollander thank you for this link may I ask how good is this site keeping up to date ???
I do the same question.
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Other things is that Av vendors can count definitions differently from others. And again it's difficult to compare products.
here is an example
if you see on the avast updates they are usually from 1 and up to hundreds http://www.avast.com/en-eu/virus-update-history-2010
if you look on Norman update they are usually in the thousands ( average is 15 000 daily they say ) the biggest i have seen is over 50 000
http://norman.com/security_center/latest_virus_definition_file_published/69002/en (OBS: the page is difficult to load with IE )
should mean that they have a big detection advantage over avast ??? ............they do not
so how this works i dont know, but as disPlay say it is difficult to compare as they count / list this differently
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Other things is that Av vendors can count definitions differently from others. And again it's difficult to compare products.
here is an example
if you see on the avast updates they are usually from 1 and up to hundreds http://www.avast.com/en-eu/virus-update-history-2010
if you look on Norman update they are usually in the thousands ( average is 15 000 daily they say ) the biggest i have seen is over 50 000
http://norman.com/security_center/latest_virus_definition_file_published/69002/en (OBS: the page is difficult to load with IE )
should mean that they have a big detection advantage over avast ??? ............they do not
so how this works i dont know, but as disPlay say it is difficult to compare as they count differently
Just like you said ;), also it depends how the av company's to their generic defenitions for example in every update of avast fro what can I see almost all the definitions created are generic, in this case norman only do this for some files, for example (AutoRun.PGF.dropper (4 variants)).It's pretty hard to determine if a antivirus or antimalware is the best by only looking at their definitions.
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the current number of malware avast find is much higher for a single virus definition can find 10, 100 or 1,000 different types of malware.
so avast has not low detection just more effective. then other company.
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Other things is that Av vendors can count definitions differently from others. And again it's difficult to compare products.
here is an example
if you see on the avast updates they are usually from 1 and up to hundreds http://www.avast.com/en-eu/virus-update-history-2010
if you look on Norman update they are usually in the thousands ( average is 15 000 daily they say ) the biggest i have seen is over 50 000
http://norman.com/security_center/latest_virus_definition_file_published/69002/en (OBS: the page is difficult to load with IE )
should mean that they have a big detection advantage over avast ??? ............they do not
so how this works i dont know, but as disPlay say it is difficult to compare as they count / list this differently
Very interesting Pondus ;)
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SpeedyPC & disPlay
I find it accurate and it's a well know company
Some example
http://www.avast.com/virus-update-history-2010
http://www.av-test.org/numbers_vendor.php?program=avast&lang=en
http://www.avira.com/en/threats/section/vdf_info/index.html
http://www.av-test.org/numbers_vendor.php?program=antivir&lang=en
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Also if you count the false positive there might be some of those numbers that can be removed right ? I hear Symantec flag alot innocent files. ;)
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This was discussed a lot in the past...
1. There are a marketing issue involved. Companies estimate the number of viruses by high.
2. There are different counts possible: variants, etc.
3. There is not an international rule for virus naming, so same virus could be consider one or more by other company.
4. Scanning settings are very important.
5. Active viruses (ITW) are really more important then the whole number.
6. Generic signatures and heuristic detections cannot be really counted as 'virus detection'.
Well, etc. etc.
Trust avast!
Many things are detected under same names.
http://www.avast.com/eng/vps_history.html only lists new names.
The number of "definitions" also counts the -gen detections somehow (Trojan-gen, ...) - that are not shown on the history page.
You can say that the history page shows only new detection names, not new detections.