A question about virus signatures…How many viruses does avast cover its users from ? I see various comparisons with different av products, and all seem to have such a big difference with each other concerning virus signatures. Why is there such a big difference between the av vendors ? Is that what separates the good av’s from the bad ones ? It seems strange with so many viruses out there, that one av product has over 100,000 virus signatures and another may have less than 30,000.
It depends,and its hard to give exact number. Heuristic and generic code detection methods can cover multimple types of the same virus/worm (multiple variants like NetSky-B,C and D variant),so the overall number of all detectable parasites is noticebly lower. Detection capability is ofcourse the same.
ok thanks for that, it seems that different vendors have there own ways of doing these things, but as long as detection is covered there shouldn’t be a problem.