Lets face it, Microsoft has been counting on its newly released Vista to shed its image as being the company that is responsible for billions of dollars worth of losses in productivity for both home and corporate users. Windows Vista sheds a fair bit of the legacy code (not all by the way) which allowed virus authors and spyware companies to infect computers with ease.
Sounds good huh? Too good? Perhaps, considering that Microsoft’s own Live OneCare suite has failed the critical VB100 certification tests.
The VB100 certification has been active since 1998 and has two essential requirements.
- The product being tested should be able to detect all the viruses that are on the WildList.
- Should not generate any false positives (i.e. should not generate alerts when clean files are scanned).
John Hawkes over at Virus Bulletin recently ran the VB100 suite of tests on the 32 bit Windows Vista (free subscription required) and the results were pretty surprising (well atleast to those who were not cynical about Microsoft’s spin). Microsoft’s very own Live OneCare product failed the test, along with McAfee, another well known vendor of both personal and corporate anti-virus solutions.
Vendors that passed the test include Kapersky, Symantec, and Computer Associates.
According to various blogs, Microsoft has promised to improve their product. :
