A signature is a set of criteria that describe what a particular piece of malware looks like.
And therein lies the problem.Īll anti-virus software uses what are called “signatures” for detecting known malware. The only difficulty is that the name of the files and the metadata (like creation and modification dates) were changed by inclusion in VirusTotal.
In addition, it should be noted that many of the “partial” samples are files that may be installed in a variety of places all by themselves, and thus they are not so partial. However, a number of the items that were missed actually were on the list. Some of these were things that an anti-spyware program ought to protect against, but to be fair, MacScan’s spyware list page does not claim that it detects. However, there were also many “in the wild” samples that were missed. (The actual numbers were 4% in the first test and 6% in the second.)Ī close examination of what was detected shows that, as expected, MacScan only detected the full, “in the wild” malware. However, MacScan remained in the neighborhood of around 5% detection. In this testing, most anti-virus software benefitted from the larger and more thoroughly-researched sample set, with a significant increase in detection rates. In a number of cases (though not all), testing was done with the complete malicious installers, applications, plugins or scripts, as found in the wild. I removed some samples from testing, and the list of samples I published made it more evident exactly what I was testing against. In my next test, I changed my methods a bit. In the interest of fairness, though, I reserved judgement until after my second round of testing.
#Free version of macscan full#
However, the problem with that argument was that the VirusTotal links I provided to the samples used in my test often only identified a portion of the malware, while in some cases a full installer or app was actually used in testing. For most of the rest of the samples, I was told that MacScan did not detect them because they were just parts of the malware, not the whole thing as found in the wild. Other companies had expressed concern about the same items. They had some legitimate concerns about some of the malware in that test.
Unfortunately, it failed my tests abysmally! The question that came to mind immediately was: why?Īfter my first test, I contacted SecureMac for comments.
#Free version of macscan mac os#
It has a long history with the Mac, having been around since the very first versions of Mac OS X. MacScan, made by SecureMac, is one of only a very few Mac-only anti-malware tools. February 12th, 2013 at 5:53 PM EST, modifiedĪfter testing many different anti-virus programs over the last few months, I found something that disturbed me greatly.
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