Consumer organisation makes over 5,000 ‘virus variants’ for AV product testing.
ConsumerReports.org
, a non-profit consumer website, has announced that it created 5,500 ‘new virus variants derived from six categories of known viruses’, for use in a comparative test of anti-virus products. The new malware was ‘unleashed’ in the testers’ lab to exercise heuristic detection in the 12 products under test.
‘This is likely to be a very unpopular move,’ said John Hawes, Technical Consultant at Virus Bulletin. ‘The AV community has always been very strongly opposed to the creation of new malware for any purpose. There’s just no need for it – plenty of new viruses are being written all the time, why would anyone in a responsible position want to add to the glut?’
The full results of the testing are only available to
ConsumerReports.org
‘s subscribers, but some information about the tests has been freely released for a limited time. Read an
overview of the tests
, and a
description of the test methodology
. See also some
comment on the tests
.
Posted on 15 August 2006 by
Virus Bulletin
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