McMcbrad
Level 20
- Oct 16, 2020
- 977
It’s a bit of a hit and miss... not too bad, but Kaspersky, Microsoft Defender and Avast/AVG are a lot better.
This applies only to the home McAfee products, not Enterprise products.
User Feedback F-Secure Quick Review
- Thread starter McMcbrad
- Start date
This applies only to the home McAfee products, not Enterprise products.
well, my understanding is that f-secure uses avira engine and sigs, so you'd expect them to be similar. however, in the last lab I checked they were a bit different: f-secure actually scored a higher detection than avira. but, with closer scrutiny, i saw that f-secure also had a far higher false-positive ... meaning, they are using avira but are just cranking up its protection level, giving the higher detection and fp (which you could do within avira settings as well). i like f-secure, but I do wonder at the logic of paying for it when I could just use avira free. f-secure does have banking protection, but ... it's kinda useless. i am impressed at with how light f-secure is (not crazy light, but pretty good) and i do like that they are less of an arse than avira (cuz i like to run supplemental security programs, and avira refuses to let me ... but f-secure doesn't seem to care). at the end of the day, it's hard to say that someone that uses someone else's tech is better, but if they limit avira bloat, it might be lighter. so better might be in the eye of the beholder. myself, i like f-secure, but I couldn't justify paying for it with avira free being available. but as long as they keep giving me free give-a-ways, I'll use it, heheh.
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It's more just changing the protection level. F-Secure combines 5 separate engines:
Capricorn (Avira and Avira cloud)
Virgo (Certificate scanning whitelist/blacklist engine)
DeepGuard (behavior blocker / EXE machine code scanner)
Lynx (Cloud Sandbox engine, 'F-Secure Online')
Hydra (Script scanner)
it gets a bit blurry when you use Avira's tech, which has many of the same equivalencies. for ex., how do I know that deep guard isn't mostly just Avira's behavioural blocker? anything from Avira will be blended and renamed and supplemented - and then rebranded. to me, it's more about marketing. I can't see their code, and I can't see their Avira contract to verify anything, nor do I want to, for there's nothing wrong with it and the finished product is good. I know everyone will disagree, lol, but to me, hydra (for ex.) is likely just Avira's script scanner with some tweaking. and there's nothing wrong with that. just a sec, I have to adjust my tin foil hat
Sorry, no, you can see the various engines they ship with the product. The Avira they ship is simply the signature scanner and protection cloud component, it has none of the hooks to do dynamic behavior blocking. You can also see from the historical Malware Hub tests that when signature scanning is turned off, DeepGuard provides all the detections. Engines like DeepGuard and Hydra predated the switch to Avira by literally a decade -- they used Aquarius instead of Capricorn back then, which was BitDefender. Before that, they used AVP which was Kaspersky.it gets a bit blurry when you use Avira's tech, which has many of the same equivalencies. for ex., how do I know that deep guard isn't mostly just Avira's behavioural blocker? anything from Avira will be blended and renamed and supplemented - and then rebranded. to me, it's more about marketing. I can't see their code, and I can't see their Avira contract to verify anything, nor do I want to, for there's nothing wrong with it and the finished product is good. I know everyone will disagree, lol, but to me, hydra (for ex.) is likely just Avira's script scanner with some tweaking. and there's nothing wrong with that. just a sec, I have to adjust my tin foil hat
In the past, they've had additional engines, Blacklight (in-house rootkit detection) and they even had Ad-Aware as a PUA scanner back when primary signature scanners were poor at detecting spyware/adware.
F-Secure has a lot of in-house R&D and it is far from a simple repackage of a off the shelf signature scanner.
You can read about DeepGuard here: https://blog-assets.f-secure.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/15163346/F-Secure_DeepGuard.pdf
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- May 26, 2014
- 1,046
it gets a bit blurry when you use Avira's tech, which has many of the same equivalencies. for ex., how do I know that deep guard isn't mostly just Avira's behavioural blocker? anything from Avira will be blended and renamed and supplemented - and then rebranded. to me, it's more about marketing. I can't see their code, and I can't see their Avira contract to verify anything, nor do I want to, for there's nothing wrong with it and the finished product is good. I know everyone will disagree, lol, but to me, hydra (for ex.) is likely just Avira's script scanner with some tweaking. and there's nothing wrong with that. just a sec, I have to adjust my tin foil hat
Well you should because this post of yours is one of the biggest misinformation and guesswork that I have ever read on this forum.
It is almost infuriating to have to read this kind of *censoring myself* online.
Anyway F-Secure IS NOT Avira.
F-Secure is just using Avira engine along with its in-house proprietary engines (yes, it is more than one), with their own cloud, interface, scan/disinfection algorithms and its famous pioneer behavior blocker (Deepguard).
The transition from Bitdefender (Aquarius) to Avira (Capricorn) engine was made very recently and all of those addition 4 engines existed before this transition and remains without any alteration.
F-Secure is one of the few security players using third party engines that actually have security know-how, that actually does properly malware hunting and R&D, it is a solid and trustable company with many years of experience of fighting malware and cybercriminals.
Before using Avira it was using Bitdefender engine (just the engine) and many years ago it was using Kaspersky SDK.
Did you know that F-Secure was the first antivirus vendor to implement a full rootkit scanner (Black Light)? Did you know that Avira doesnt have anything remotely close to DeepGuard?
Btw DeepGuard is incredibly powerful and you should read its whitepaper, better yet you should read F-Secure history too.
Reference:
How to verify if you are using the new Capricorn engine
F-Secure has released a new generation engine for one of our core scanning engines, which, at F-Secure, we call Capricorn.
What are the functions of Hydra, Virgo, Capricorn and Lynx modules?
Can you tell what features meet the following modules: Hydra, Virgo, Capricorn, Lynx? I could not find information on this topic but I'm just curious.
i think MalwareTips needs to introduce a valium badge, lol. that's too funny. and dang, i want a greatest misinformation guesswork badge. i demand my digital laurel for being the best!
- May 26, 2014
- 1,046
You deserve that my special boy ! No sarcastic reply will change that, anyway enjoy your time here on MalwareTips, maybe with time and reading you may leave that extraordinary badge behindi think MalwareTips needs to introduce a valium badge, lol. that's too funny. and dang, i want a greatest misinformation guesswork badge. i demand my digital laurel for being the best!
Dont waste your time replying me, maybe, just maybe you should instead use your valuable time to read more (start with the links above) so we can have more meaningful discussions on this forum.
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McMcbrad
Level 20
- Oct 16, 2020
- 977
F-Secure had their DeepGuard released in 2006, which is mentioned on their whitepaper shared above (I’ve read it before and I know), whilst for ages, Avira, except for AHEAD heuristics, didn’t have anything proactive and even now their behavioural blocker’s effectiveness is highly-doubtful.
Avira is an extremely bloated product inconsistencies in the UI, heavy on system resources. F-Secure is fast and light and includes many technologies that Avira has lacked/lacks now.
Avira is nothing more than a scanner - just like ESET. Their whole effectiveness lies in their heuristics. Once you bypass that, they have 0 know-how to stop an attack.
Only difference between Avira and ESET is that ESET is far lighter, less bloated, much more settings and has a low-level web blocker.
Avira is an extremely bloated product inconsistencies in the UI, heavy on system resources. F-Secure is fast and light and includes many technologies that Avira has lacked/lacks now.
Avira is nothing more than a scanner - just like ESET. Their whole effectiveness lies in their heuristics. Once you bypass that, they have 0 know-how to stop an attack.
Only difference between Avira and ESET is that ESET is far lighter, less bloated, much more settings and has a low-level web blocker.
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- Mar 16, 2019
- 2,354
Well, I gave Avira a try and gotta say it's incredibly light. Avira is the soul of F-Secure so it makes sense why both are incredibly light. It's like a Cheetah as @McMcbrad said. I feel the free Avira is even a bit lighter, consumes less rams too because it has less features. Avira free installs a lot of bloat but thankfully uninstalling those is super easy. But F-Secure is much more than just Avira's engine like everyone said above. But I can say if anyone wants something incredibly light for free then Avira is pretty good and if you like the lightness of the engine but prefers a bit better protection, some more features then pay for F-Secure
McMcbrad
Level 20
- Oct 16, 2020
- 977
I’ll give it a try soonWell, I gave Avira a try and gotta say it's incredibly light. Avira is the soul of F-Secure so it makes sense why both are incredibly light. It's like a Cheetah as @McMcbrad said. I feel the free Avira is even a bit lighter, consumes less rams too because it has less features. Avira free installs a lot of bloat but thankfully uninstalling those is super easy. But F-Secure is much more than just Avira's engine like everyone said above. But I can say if anyone wants something incredibly light for free then Avira is pretty good and if you like the lightness of the engine but prefers a bit better protection, some more features then pay for F-Secure
It may have improved from my last test.
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- Dec 23, 2014
- 5,620
Interesting whitepaper:I’ll give it a try soon
It may have improved from my last test.
whitepaper_NightVision_EN_20170704.pdf (avira.com)
It seems that Avira uses also sandboxing to detect malware, but I am not sure if it works for non-EXE files.
Edit.
Corrected the wrong link.
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McMcbrad
Level 20
- Oct 16, 2020
- 977
I think you have copied wrong link?
This whitepaper mentions *.exe and *.dll.
[PDF] Whitepaper Avira Protection Cloud (APC) - Free Download PDF
Download Whitepaper Avira Protection Cloud (APC)...
silo.tips
Unfortunately these white papers aren’t very detailed, they only provide a brief solution overview. They also haven’t been updated recently and the only way to find out how all works is to put Avira to a test.
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- Dec 23, 2014
- 5,620
Yes, it was the second link in your post. I corrected my previous post.I think you have copied wrong link?
This whitepaper mentions *.exe and *.dll.
It’s a small part of larger ML-based ecosystem (NightVision):[PDF] Whitepaper Avira Protection Cloud (APC) - Free Download PDF
Download Whitepaper Avira Protection Cloud (APC)...
Unfortunately these white papers aren’t very detailed, they only provide a brief solution overview. They also haven’t been updated recently and the only way to find out how all works is to put Avira to a test.
- Dec 23, 2014
- 5,620
It would be interesting to see if the MOTW is required.This whitepaper mentions *.exe and *.dll.
[PDF] Whitepaper Avira Protection Cloud (APC) - Free Download PDF
Download Whitepaper Avira Protection Cloud (APC)...
McMcbrad
Level 20
- Oct 16, 2020
- 977
I have just installed Avira for a quick Protection Cloud test and in less than a minute I've noticed several things:
These are the things that I am able to capture, but the whole experience and in-product language is the same as what Avast uses for AVG.
Update/Edit:
To top everything off, upon virus detection, there is a Windows XP-style window.
Upon clicking on "X", yet another type of user experience comes up:
It already missed 1 threat, out of 3 I downloaded: VirusTotal
- Interface is a bad and unsuccessful copy of AVG/Avast (more AVG). Even installation is the same. It starts with a large window and then gets minimised to a small tray pop-up.
These are the things that I am able to capture, but the whole experience and in-product language is the same as what Avast uses for AVG.
- It asks you to buy more and more stuff (again, Avast way).
- It installed Opera Browser, without even asking (very bad impression)
- It's still using 32-bit architecture like Panda
- It installs various components with no consistency between their UX: each one of them looks different than the rest.
- It installs an extension that blocks malicious sites, but I am asked to pay for Web Protection...?
Update/Edit:
To top everything off, upon virus detection, there is a Windows XP-style window.
Upon clicking on "X", yet another type of user experience comes up:
It already missed 1 threat, out of 3 I downloaded: VirusTotal
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McMcbrad
Level 20
- Oct 16, 2020
- 977
Due to the reasons above, I am uninstalling Avira for now and I consider it failed on my test.
I will redownload it on a later stage for a detailed review.
Also, they have now merged all products in one, so it's impossible to just remove VPN for example or optimiser. You need to have it all.
I will redownload it on a later stage for a detailed review.
Also, they have now merged all products in one, so it's impossible to just remove VPN for example or optimiser. You need to have it all.
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- Apr 24, 2016
- 3,126
Can you do a review on Kaspersky Security Cloud Free?
Microsoft Defender is having issues on my laptop.
So, for me the choice is F-Secure Safe (free from my ISP as Ziggo Safe Online) or Kaspersky Security Cloud Free.
Like them both and looking forward to your opinion.
Microsoft Defender is having issues on my laptop.
So, for me the choice is F-Secure Safe (free from my ISP as Ziggo Safe Online) or Kaspersky Security Cloud Free.
Like them both and looking forward to your opinion.
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- Mar 16, 2019
- 2,354
Share it another Microsoft Defender related thread if required.
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- May 10, 2019
- 1,414
If you are talking about Avira in the past, but now I disagree. Avira is very very light. I am talking about the antivirus Pro. I have used it for some time (the three-month trial).
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