Virus Bulletin
Copyright © 2019 Virus Bulletin
Anti-malware products don't have an easy job these days. There are millions of malware samples – which tend to be written with the explicit goal of bypassing anti-malware products – to be detected and blocked, while at the same time there are millions of legitimate programs – which occasionally use some of the same techniques as malware – that mustn't be blocked. On top of that, there are dozens of competing products on the market.
Users are right to expect anti-malware products to satisfy a minimum standard of blocking malicious executables that have recently been seen in the wild, while blocking few to no legitimate programs.
For more than two decades, Virus Bulletin has set a minimum standard for anti-virus (or anti-malware) products, checking whether products live up to expectation and providing those that do with the VB100 'stamp of approval'.
This report details the performance of 30 such products from 28 different vendors during January and February 2019.
In the VB100 test, a copy of the product to be tested is installed on two platforms: Windows 10 and Windows 7. On each platform, and at three different times in the test, the product is asked to scan both the latest version of the WildList1 and a selection of clean files taken from Virus Bulletin's own set of files belonging to widely used legitimate software.
A legitimate file that is blocked at least once is considered a false positive, while a WildList file that isn't blocked is considered a miss.
A product achieves a VB100 certification if:
and
For full details, we refer to the VB100 methodology on the Virus Bulletin website: https://www.virusbulletin.com/testing/vb100/vb100-methodology/vb100-methodology-ver1-1/. This test used version 1.1 of the VB100 methodology.
The malware part of the VB100 certification uses the WildList, a regularly updated list of extremely well-vetted malware samples, guaranteed to have been spotted in the wild multiple times. This makes them very suitable for a certification test like VB100.
The 'Diversity Test' looks at products' detection of another set of recent malware samples, to acknowledge the fact that products detect malware samples beyond a standard set of samples, and provides a measure of that detection.
Products were allowed to download updates during the course of the test. The version numbers listed in the results that follows refer to those at the start of the test.
| Windows 7 version | 12.6.997.11652 |  |
| Windows 10 version | 12.6.997.11652 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 97.44% |
| Windows 7 version | 12.6.997.11652 | |
| Windows 10 version | 12.6.997.11652 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 97.44% |
| Windows 7 version | 9.0.52.5 | |
| Windows 10 version | 9.0.52.5 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 2019.01.14 | |
| Windows 10 version | 2019.01.10 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 19.1.2360 | |
| Windows 10 version | 19.1.2360 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 19.1.3075 | |
| Windows 10 version | 19.1.3075 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 8.3.52.190 | |
| Windows 10 version | 8.3.52.190 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 5.2.1 | |
| Windows 10 version | 5.2.1 | |
| WildList detection | 99.6% | |
| False positive rate | 0.002% | |
| Diversity test rate | 99.59% |
| Windows 7 version | 15.1.0112 | |
| Windows 10 version | 15.1.0112 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 2018.12.1.9144 | |
| Windows 10 version | 2018.12.1.9144 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 14.0.1400.2029 | |
| Windows 10 version | 14.0.1400.2029 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 12.0.31.0 | |
| Windows 10 version | 12.0.31.0 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 3.0.1.3.31873 | |
| Windows 10 version | 3.0.1.3.31873 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | V18121900 | |
| Windows 10 version | V19012400 | |
| WildList detection | 99.9% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 4.12.3102.401 | |
| Windows 10 version | 4.12.3102.401 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.008% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 27.31.0.0 | |
| Windows 10 version | 27.31.0.0 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 5.6.2.1117 | |
| Windows 10 version | 5.6.2.1117 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 25.5.0.2 | |
| Windows 10 version | 25.5.0.4 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 99.90% |
| Windows 7 version | 2.19.14 | |
| Windows 10 version | 2.19.14 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.002% | |
| Diversity test rate | 99.08% |
| Windows 7 version | 15.1.0350 | |
| Windows 10 version | 15.1.0350 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 11.0.0.6499 | |
| Windows 10 version | 11.0.0.6499 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 99.69% |
| Windows 7 version | 3.0.0.85 | |
| Windows 10 version | 3.0.0.85 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.003% | |
| Diversity test rate | 91.61% |
| Windows 7 version | 5.0.0.57 | |
| Windows 10 version | 5.0.0.57 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.007% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 1.0.105328 | |
| Windows 10 version | 1.0.129712 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 12.3.26600.901 | |
| Windows 10 version | 12.3.26597.901 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 9.0.0.747 | |
| Windows 10 version | 9.0.0.747 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 11.0.0.775 | |
| Windows 10 version | 11.0.0.775 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 11.0.3.20 | |
| Windows 10 version | 11.0.3.20 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 8.8.44 | |
| Windows 10 version | 8.8.42 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 81.68% |
| Windows 7 version | 2.0.1548 | |
| Windows 10 version | 2.0.1548 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity test rate | 100.00% |
All tested products were certified.
Technical and other issues can render the data we collect insufficient or otherwise unsuitable for accurate reporting. In such cases, the methodology allows us to discard the affected test part and record the event below. Two healthy test parts out of three are required for the certification to be issued.
The WildList contained 2,908 samples. The set of clean files used for the false positive test contained 99,996 files, of which 29,217 were portable executable (PE) files. The set used for the Diversity Test contained 977 samples.
1 The WildList is an extremely well-vetted set of malware recently observed in the wild by researchers: http://www.wildlist.org/.
