Download Paper - AV-Test

EICAR 2000 Best Paper Proceedings
A Guideline to Anti-Malware-Software Testing
Abstract
Today, most of the popular anti-virus test strategies are obsolete. Index numbers like “ best
detection score” are unsatisfying, because a program can only find viruses it searches for
and the number may be a little bit accelerated by heuristic rules to find new and unknown
viruses. This way of testing is possibly interesting for anti-virus researchers, but not the
real world, because the customers do not know what to do with all the numbers in the
tables.
Therefore a closer look at the real needs is required. This includes on-demand, on-access,
disinfection and false positive testing of the products. The goal for this type of testing is not
a mass test, but a test which is as exact as possible. Of course, a test of anti-virus
products should include stability tests, tests of user-friendliness, security, efficiency,
compatibility, documentation, support, installation and many other things, too. After a test,
usually a review have to be written and the test is going to be published in a magazine,
however, there are some problems which can occur and they will be described in this
paper, too.
It discusses the need for current and future enhancement in anti-virus-testing techniques
for IBM-compatible computers, including the foundations and limitations on such testing.
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