I am wondering why Avast did so poorly on the March AV Comparative File Detection Test of Malicious Software. It was next to the last in overall rating with 95 false positives.
See http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/avc_fdt_201403_en.pdf
Maybe there is something wrong with the scan engine or the pack they used wasnt cooperating with Avast.
There are many possibilities.
Those so called “tests” are extremely difficult to replicate. And the only “real” tests I care about
is with my computer and what I do with it. I don’t know much about their methodology and could
care less.
This may interest you http://blog.kaspersky.com/antivirus-comparisons/
This is really bothering. I can’t sugar coat it anymore.
First off, note that the OP is referring to AV-Comparatives not AV-Test which is the topic of that Kaspersky blog.
As I pointed out in another thread here when this blog was referenced, it takes exception to the awarding of “AV-Test Certification” to products which have very different results in the tests. It makes the point that a product’s claim that it has been “Certified” by AV-Test tells you little about how effective that product is at protection.
It also suggests that the AV-Test test results themselves are reliable indicators. What Kaspersky objects to is the new classification used by AV-Test which lumps most tested products into a single “Certified” category with an apparently low threshold of acceptance.
This can be seen if one looks at the test results for “Home User Products” for example. As can be seen in the Windows 7 results for JanFeb 2014 - only one product didn’t receive the “AV-Test Certified” logo: AhnLab. All of the others were “Certified” with protection ratings from a low of 2.5 out of 6.0 (PCKeeper) to a high of 6.0 (multiple products).
With respect to the poor showing of avast! in these tests - both AV-Test and AV-Comparatives - since they started using avast! 2014 in the tests, I wonder if there might be a clue to this downturn in scores from earlier versions in a post made by Igor (I believe) in another thread. As I recall the OP was asking why avast! consistently failed to detect a particular threat while most other AV products caught it (as seen at VirusTotal). As I recall the answer was that it would not get detected in an on-demand scan but would be caught if an attempt were made to open/run the infected file. If the testing organizations are using on-demand scans then this could be part of the reason why avast! appears to be missing many threats caught by others.
Thank you for the thoughts and explanations.