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Popular anti-malware products have generated false positives for use on 64-bit Windows Vista, according to an independent security certification body. Tests on the latest OS of 20 products carried out by Virus Bulletin (VB) found six either generated false alarms or failed to detect 100% of the viruses contained on a WildList. Trend Micro, one of the 'big four' anti-malware companies, submitted three of its anti-virus products, all of which falsely identified a Microsoft development tool as spyware. Other products to generate false positives were Fortinet's FortiClient, Ikarus Utilities, and VirusBuster, which recently received a Trojan Checkmark certificate from West Coast Labs. John Hawes, technical consultant at Virus Bulletin, said: “The items added to our set of known clean files this month mostly consisted of common items taken from the 'most-popular' lists of free download sites, so it is a concern that the additions have caused such an upsurge in false detections. "A false positive can cause as much disruption as a virus infection. False warnings often lead end-users to delete valid files in the belief that they are some form of attack and the resultant damage can be significant." Windows Vista, launched last year, already looks set to play a major part in the future of computing, and x64 is also a growing trend. Prior to the release of Vista much debate raged over the lack of access to the PatchGuard kernel protection system, as well as other security measures included in the x64 version of the platform. The results of the Virus Bulletin test suggest that the locking down of the operating system has indeed made for a rough terrain for anti-malware developers. Microsoft received criticism earlier this year after its own consumer AV product, OneCare, failed to achieve VB100 certification on the 32-bit version of the Vista platform. This time, however, its enterprise product, Forefront, put in a strong performance and was awarded VB100 status for Vista x64. Virus Bulletin said: “With many of today's products showing an increasing reliance on heuristic detection techniques, anti-malware vendors must work hard to minimise false detections.” Aug 3, 2007 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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