Hi Link,
Every av company has periods where detection has been flawed in some sense of the word or particular detection is more false positive prone.
Incidents are incidents and incidents are bound to happen.
Then given the introduction of some hick-ups as unsuspected backend issues and an update glitch and the test of that moment could have be drawn to a lower scale or ruined even.
These are existing problems, but there is also the fine tuning of what detection one will term riskware, PUPs and what comes as genuine malware that is actually not malcode but benevolent, it is a look-alike tool in the hands of the qualified remover.
Read about this problem here: http://blog.nirsoft.net/2009/05/17/antivirus-companies-cause-a-big-headache-to-small-developers/ (article author is Nir Sofer, a top security developer from Ramat Gan, Gush Dan, Israel), recently we saw problems with false detection on AdwCleaner etc.
Some compressed packers can create false positives, also “ghosts” from passed false detection can come into play - 2007 false detection repeating itself to-day.
All major AV solutions are out in the doldrums during specific periods ;D.
avast! for instance has/had a hard time qua detection in Brazil as there all malcreations are specifically tested to go under the avast! detection radar as avast! holds almost a full monopolistic position in the Brazilian av theater. They one time even called it the Brazilian av sieve, which of course it is not and never has been.
But the product has kept me free of infections over the last 10 years, which is quite an accomplishment seen to the repeated “cold reconnaissance website scanning” I perform on a daily bases (thousands and thousands of sites were dissected to obtain new malicious finds to add to avast!'s detection - so I am out in the av trenches of the real life theater much of the time (safehex, sandboxed, script and third party requests being blocked and never going out to where the real danger lures). Be convinced avast! is a helluva good av solution!
polonus
