Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Roboscan Internet Security Free

By Neil J. Rubenking

If your mental picture of how an antivirus works involves cute little antivirus minions carrying pills for your computer's ills, Roboscan Internet Security Free may be just what the doctor ordered. It did a good job in my malware cleanup and blocking tests. However, its bonus firewall isn't reliable, and the user interface could use re-organization.

On the main screen, that pill-toting minion that I mentioned reports overall security status, with a more detailed report below. If there's a configuration problem, just click the Resolve button to put it right. The minion shows up again in a banner ad across the bottom that urges you to try the product's Pro edition.

Fast, Easy Install
Roboscan licenses an anti-malware engine from Bitdefender and also uses its own Tera engine. Getting Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2013 installed on my twelve malware-infested test systems was a chore, with many systems requiring a reboot into the product's Rescue Mode. I was pleasantly surprised when Roboscan installed on all twelve systems without a hitch, even the one that only functions in Safe Mode.

Immediately after installation, Roboscan reports a security issue due to out-of-date malware definitions. In each case I clicked Resolve to fix the problem, but on almost half of the test systems that initial update failed. Yet in every case when I directly clicked Update the process succeeded. Go figure!

Great Detection, Good Cleanup
Roboscan offers Quick, Basic, and Advanced scans. For testing I chose Advanced. You can also choose to scan just the My Documents area, or the Desktop, or any user-defined combination of folders. I'm not sure it's necessary to offer so many choices.

During the scan, Roboscan displays found threats in a tree structure organized by threat type and color-coded by severity. You can open each threat to view the corresponding file and Registry traces even before the scan is complete.

The default action on completing a scan is "Auto clean," which I took to mean that it would proceed immediately to cleaning up found threats. It didn't. I had to click the Clean button in order to finish the process.

Roboscan detected 87 percent of threats in this test, the same as Bitdefender. But where Bitdefender scored 6.4 points for malware cleanup, the best among products tested with my current malware collection, Roboscan earned just 5.6 points due to less-than-stellar cleanup.

Roboscan left behind executable components for 57 percent of the threats it detected, and for over a fifth of those at least one malware process was still running. For fully half of the remaining 43 percent, Roboscan left behind 100 percent of the non-executable file and Registry traces.

On closer examination, I found that Roboscan's behavior didn't line up at all with Bitdefender's. Each missed threats that the other detected, coincidentally hitting the same detection percentage. I'm not sure what to make of that.

Emsisoft Emergency Kit 2.0 detected 84 percent of the threats but also scored 5.6 points. Top scorers tested with my previous malware collection were Norton AntiVirus 2012 and Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus , with 7.1 and 6.9 points respectively.

Looking specifically at rootkits, threats that hide from Windows and from antivirus tools, Roboscan didn't quite track with Bitdefender. Bitdefender detected all of the samples using rootkit technology and scored 7.6 points for rootkit cleanup. Roboscan detected 80 percent and scored 5.8 points. For details on how I calculate these scores, see How We Test Malware Removal.

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Good Malware Blocking
As part of my malware blocking test, I attempt to re-download my current collection of malware. This isn't an exhaustive test, naturally, and there's a level of attrition as the sites hosting these threats fade away. Still, it gives me an idea of a product's capabilities.

Many antivirus tools install a browser plug-in that keeps users from even visiting a known malicious URL; not Roboscan. Roboscan did block two thirds of the still-available threats during the download process. Of products tested with the same set of malware, Bitdefender scored best in this test, blocking 82 percent at the URL level and another 9 percent during download.

The main malware blocking test begins when I open a folder containing already-downloaded malware samples. Roboscan's real-time protection leapt into action and quickly corralled 76 percent of the threats. The notification dialog for real-time protection looks a lot like the results window after a manual scan. It can display any number of real-time threats, organized by type and color-coded by risk level.

I proceeded to launch the threats that weren't eliminated on sight. Roboscan completely missed just over half of them, and one threat managed to launch a malicious process despite detection by Roboscan. Overall it detected 87 percent of the threats and scored 8.5 for malware blocking, putting it just behind Bitdefender.

SecureIT is the hands-down malware blocking winner among recent products, with 97 percent detection and a score of 9.7. ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall came close with 95 percent detection and 9.3 points. If we include products tested with the previous malware collection, Webroot is the big winner, with a perfect 10 points.

Like Bitdefender, Roboscan detected 100 percent of the rootkit threats and scored 9.8 points. That's good, but ZoneAlarm and Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition 2.0 earned a perfect 10 points for rootkit blocking. To learn where these numbers come from, see How We Test Malware Blocking.

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Normally I would also reference tests by independent antivirus labs. However, except for a single VB100 award by Virus Bulletin, none of the labs include Roboscan in their testing.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/1YKI_Gjg6Ok/0,2817,2408555,00.asp

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