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11/20/2005 Archived Entry: "Which AV can you trust?"

Two computer columnists, Charlie Demerjian and Bruce Schneier, have now pointed out that the Sony rootkit has raised the issue: what anti-virus vendors can you trust? As Demerjian says,

If you want to find a trustworthy security vendor, I would recommend looking for ones that stood up on the Sony malware DRM infection issue and said 'this is bad' early and loudly. F-Secure comes to mind, but there are others. The ones that said 'grumble, mumble, maybe, sorta' a week later are not what you want to have protecting your machines.

F-Secure is the clear champion here. They discovered the rootkit independently and published it almost simultaneously with Mark Russinovich. As I recall, Sophos and Computer Associates were quick off the mark with vulnerability announcements and rootkit detectors, so perhaps these are the "others" Demerjian mentions. McAfee and Symantec (Norton) are becoming notorious for dragging their feet on this, so they're the "baddies" in my book from now on. Anyone know how well the other anti-virus vendors responded to this?

If you're shopping for Windows anti-virus software, I'd recommend F-Secure.  —brad