Archive for: Security Essentials

The Most Used Antivirus

OESIS OK presented an interesting report about antivirus software and their current market share. Within this report some important, and some surprising, facts were revealed. Take a look.

This is the report regarding most used security applications:

OESIS OK presents as a company for “Antivirus interoperability certification software testing”, that means they are continuously evaluating the antivirus market share and the possibilities behind it. Here are some of the quick facts about this report:

• 42% of antivirus and security tools installed are freeware. They say “It would appear that end users have as much faith in the ability of free antivirus applications to keep them secure as they do paid antivirus”.
• Avast Free is the most popular application with 11.45%.
• The list of free antivirus and applications completes with: Avira Antivir Personal (9.19%); AVG Free (8.6%) and fourth Microsoft Security Essentials with (7.48%).
• Regarding paid applications: Avast with 5.54%; Kaspersky with 4.48%; Norton with 4.24% and finally ESET NOD32 with 3.84%

A PDF version of the complete report can be found here.

This is also the graph of the distribution of the market share regarding vendors:

Fake Microsoft Antivirus Could Infect Your Computer

Microsoft released an important bulletin last week about a known Trojan that appeared in the web: Win32/Fakeinit that simulates to be a newer version of Microsoft Security Essentials.

The images provided, as well as the information about the virus, are pretty remarkable. The interface has some similarities with Microsoft’s antivirus, appearing with the name “Security Essentials 2010”. But I think the most interesting about it is that this malware has a lot of work done within the design that will confuse most of the unfortunate users.

The results of being infected with this virus are could be disastrous: You cannot kill any process, modify the registry or even run “msconfig”, changing also your desktop background saying that your computer is infected; another component will start monitoring your internet traffic blocking some websites.

And even more, the virus will request to “buy the full version” to “solve” your problems, and of course the “virus scan” that simulates finds a ton of threats in your computer.

The good thing is that Microsoft Security Essentials database does protect you from this clever virus.