The Anti-Malware Shootout

What is the anti-malware shootout?

We take a very very infected virtual machine and try to clean it with the most popular anti-virus and anti-spyware applications. Infections include trojans, rootkits, rogue anti-malware and other misc. malware.

What is the environment?

The environment is an unpatched windows xp workstation with no antivirus or antispyware. The machine was infected by using the internet for 1 month with no anti-malware protection and no firewall. The workstation is severely infected with malware and is almost useless (not unlike the customers I see everyday).

What constitutes success?

1. Being able to browse the internet with no popups, redirects or crashes.
2. Observing that there are no suspicious open ports.
3. There are no fake warnings saying “you are infected”.

Who gets test? (the 5 starters are below, but this list will grow)

1. AVG Anti-Virus
2. Avg Anti-Spyware
3. Kaspersky Anti-Virus
4. Symantec’s 360
5. MalwareBytes

How will the results be posted?

The results will be posted in both text form and video form (via youtube).  All results will be in the “Anti-Malware Shootout” category.  The reviews will be completely non biased.