ESET makes what I believe to be the best antivirus application, and last week they announced that they really had something to be proud of. They earned their 50th VB100 award, which came from a test for their ESET Security offering on Ubuntu Linux Server. What’s even more amazing is that ESET has only failed three times when being tested a total of 53 times:
- Failure 1 (February 1998) – NOD-iCE 7.19
- Failure 2 (November 2000) – NOD32 1.47
- Failure 3 (April 2002) – NOD32 1.19
The test checks to see whether antivirus applications can detect the “in the wild” viruses, which shouldn’t be too tough since it’s looking for virus signatures that already exist. The tough part, however, is that in order to pass the antivirus program cannot return any false positives. By that they mean it cannot identify a clean file as being a virus.
You may or may not be impressed with how well they’ve done, but when putting it up against some of the industry-leading security companies I think you’ll understand why this is such a big deal. Here’s a list of stats I assembled from several companies that regularly participate in the VB100, and they are sorted according to the percentage of tests they have passed (best ones first):
| Name | Passed | Failed | Pass Rate |
| ESET | 50 | 3 | 94.3% |
| Symantec | 44 | 6 | 88.0% |
| Sophos | 41 | 15 | 73.2% |
| Kaspersky | 42 | 16 | 72.4% |
| CA eTrust | 34 | 13 | 72.3% |
| Norman | 39 | 16 | 70.9% |
| BitDefender | 17 | 7 | 70.8% |
| McAfee | 35 | 20 | 63.6% |
| FRISK | 20 | 13 | 60.6% |
| Trend Micro | 16 | 11 | 59.3% |
| F-Secure | 29 | 24 | 54.7% |
| Alwil Avast | 25 | 22 | 53.2% |
| AVG Grisoft | 22 | 22 | 50.0% |
ESET and Symantec are the only two that managed to score above a 75%, and both of them deserve credit for that. Congrats to ESET for being the first company to hit 50 passed tests!
Wow everyone here in México should be happy, after all every single person i know have their own “cracked” NOD32……
That’s pretty crazy… I didn’t realize cracking NOD32 was so big In Mexico.
Hi Ryan… and what about Avira? according to many comparatives it does very well too.
[blogs.pcmag.com]
I´m thinking on buying it as I´ve a user of their free version.
Very well trust their protection. I did too and then got infected yet it never detected 3 worms. Installed Kaspersky and haven’t been infected since. Kaspersky is the current leading one as of June 2008. Just try installing it on your NOD comp and I’m sure it’ll find some viruses/worms.
Wow,
I didn’t know AVG was so low ranked.
I’ve been using it for a really long time without a single problem. Of course I’m not the type of user that clicks in every single banner or email I get.
Maybe I should look for a diferent solution to recommend from now on…
The VB100 test is a load of bull and only anyone who uses VB100 test to judge the reliability of a product doesnt have a clue about these stuff.
They use a very small sample of in the wild malware to test products. The sample is so small that it often becomes a matter of luck. No AV product provides 100% protection.
A better comparison is provided by av-comparatives.org and av-test.org
In those tests generally avira and kaspersky comes out on top (ignoring the ones like trustport and avk which uses multiple engines).
Avira has tbe best detection rate. I started using Avira recently because its the only one which is able to offer good enough protection in the hostile environment of my college (lan,wifi and cybercafe).
But, if you are a poweruser you would be frustrated by the lack of options or features (esp if you are migrating from kaspersky). its engine is also as good as kaspersky and it had failed the self protection test conducted by anti-malware.
I always thought that Kaspersky is one of the best but now…
So NOD32 = ESET?
Ive been using Eset Smart Security for a few months now and Its been great.
Ive had a few problems with it blocking some of my websites but I managed to figure out how to sort it out.
The options menu is a little complex but after a while you get used to it.
If you don’t want to pay then you can sign up for a 30 day trial every month (that’s what I do).
They’ve only had 15 total tests… I only included the ones that had at least 20 or so tests to make sure the percentages were relatively accurate. They’ve done pretty good thus far though… of the 15 they only failed 2.
The problem with this test though is that they could have failed because they detected a virus on a clean file. So AVG may not be bad at finding viruses, but it might be a little overprotective at times.
We normally post about all of the antivirus tests that are made public. And Kaspersky only got a “Standard” rating from av-comparatives.org on the last test… which isn’t all that great. NOD32 has almost always gotten Advanced+.
Yes, ESET is the one who makes NOD32 and the ESET Smart Security suite.
The Smart Security suite is what I’ve chosen to use as well. I bought a 2-year license when it first came out and couldn’t be happier with it.
Kaspersky got standard in the Heuristics test(proactive). It was ahead of nod32 in the on demand test.
Anyway, its not that Nod32 isnt a good av, its just that vb100 is a crappy test which is of no significance.
How many PCs can you install ESET Smart Security be installed on? I would like to install the product on my laptop and desktop
Thanks
Tom
One computer per license. I wanted to do the same thing as you, and so when I purchased my license I got a 2-user license that’s good for 2 years. It seemed to be the best deal.