Virus Bulletin
Copyright © 2019 Virus Bulletin
Since the inception of the VB100 certification scheme in 1998, both the threat landscape and the products tested by the scheme have evolved, but the VB100 award remains as relevant now as it was 21 years ago – providing a stamp of quality and competence for anti-malware products that satisfy a minimum standard of detecting malicious executables that have recently been seen in the wild, while blocking few to no legitimate programs.
This report details the VB100 certification of 37 anti‑malware products from 34 different vendors during July and August 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 follow refer to those at the start of the test.
| Windows 7 version | 12.6.1005.11662 |  |
| Windows 10 version | 12.6.1005.11662 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.69% |
| Windows 7 version | 12.6.1005.11662 | |
| Windows 10 version | 12.6.1005.11662 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.69% |
| Windows 7 version | 2019.07.08-7.81300 | |
| Windows 10 version | 2019.07.08-7.81300 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.001% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.69% |
| Windows 7 version | 9.0.56.1 | |
| Windows 10 version | 9.0.56.1 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 2019.07.07 | |
| Windows 10 version | 2019.07.03 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.79% |
| Windows 7 version | 19.6.2383 | |
| Windows 10 version | 19.6.2383 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 19.6.3098 | |
| Windows 10 version | 19.6.3098 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 8.3.54.60 | |
| Windows 10 version | 8.3.54.58 | |
| WildList detection | 99.9% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 5.2.1 | |
| Windows 10 version | 5.2.1 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.008% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 98.24% |
| Windows 7 version | 1.2.1.2 | |
| Windows 10 version | 1.2.1.2 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 97.93% |
| Windows 7 version | 2019.6.0.9533 | |
| Windows 10 version | 2019.6.0.9533 | |
| 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 | 99.8% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.69% |
| Windows 7 version | 12.1.34.0 | |
| Windows 10 version | 12.1.34.0 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 4.0.2.23116 | |
| Windows 10 version | 4.0.2.23116 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.79% |
| Windows 7 version | 8.3.54.36 | |
| Windows 10 version | 8.3.54.58 | |
| WildList detection | 99.8% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.69% |
| Windows 7 version | 4.20.3102.471 | |
| Windows 10 version | 4.20.3102.471 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 29.7.0 | |
| Windows 10 version | 29.7.0 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.79% |
| 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 | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 11.0.0.2202 | |
| Windows 10 version | 11.0.0.2202 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 100.00% |
| Windows 7 version | 2.5.201 | |
| Windows 10 version | 2.5.201 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.79% |
| Windows 7 version | 2.19.14 | |
| Windows 10 version | 2.19.14 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.79% |
| Windows 7 version | 15.1.0362 | |
| Windows 10 version | 15.1.0362 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.79% |
| Windows 7 version | 11.1.0.15919 | |
| Windows 10 version | 11.1.0.15919 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.79% |
| Windows 7 version | 1.0.134.90395 | |
| Windows 10 version | 1.0.134.90385 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.002% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.38% |
| Windows 7 version | 4.13.75 | |
| Windows 10 version | 4.13.75 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.79% |
| Windows 7 version | 3.0.0.85 | |
| Windows 10 version | 3.0.0.90 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.004% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 84.25% |
| Windows 7 version | 4.13.75 | |
| Windows 10 version | 4.13.75 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.79% |
| Windows 7 version | 5.0.0.57 | |
| Windows 10 version | 5.0.0.57 | |
| WildList detection | 99.9% | |
| False positive rate | 0.002% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.90% |
| Windows 7 version | 1.2.188548 | |
| Windows 10 version | 1.2.188548 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.79% |
| Windows 7 version | 12.3.26607.901 | |
| Windows 10 version | 12.3.26607.901 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.90% |
| Windows 7 version | 4.13.75 | |
| Windows 10 version | 4.13.75 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.79% |
| Windows 7 version | 11.5.0.222 | |
| Windows 10 version | 11.5.0.222 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.69% |
| 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 | 99.69% |
| Windows 7 version | 11.0.4.2 | |
| Windows 10 version | 11.0.4.2 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 99.90% |
| Windows 7 version | 8.9.65 | |
| Windows 10 version | 8.9.65 | |
| WildList detection | 100.0% | |
| False positive rate | 0.000% | |
| Diversity Test rate | 65.39% |
| 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 participating products achieved VB100 certification in this test.
The WildList sample set contained 1,508 samples. The set of clean files used for the false positive test contained 99,997 files, of which 29,192 were portable executable (PE) files. The set used for the Diversity Test contained 965 samples.
1 The WildList is an extremely well-vetted set of malware recently observed in the wild by researchers: http://www.wildlist.org/.
