App Review F-Secure Safe

It is advised to take all reviews with a grain of salt. In extreme cases some reviews use dramatization for entertainment purposes.

Paul.R

Level 17
Thread author
Verified
Well-known
May 16, 2013
844


F‑Secure SAFE is an award-winning internet security suite that won the AV‑TEST Best Protection award 2018. SAFE protects you from viruses, trojans and ransomware. SAFE also secures your online banking connection. You can set limits for internet usage for children. You and your family can surf safely — both on desktop and mobile.


 

MacDefender

Level 16
Verified
Top Poster
Oct 13, 2019
779
Interesting test.... Just some observations:

  • Web protection seemed to miss 2 phishing pages. Perhaps the weakness here is specific to phishing?
  • Seems like one of the malicious links downloads a VBS and that is then caught by DeepGuard, of all things!
  • F-Secure static scanning, unsurprisingly, seems to have let some samples escape but caught them dynamically when they were run (not even by DeepGuard for a few of them). This seems to match our observations that F-Secure isn't the best at static scanning even though its overall protection is quite good. If you rely on static scanning as a primary means, it's better to choose something else.
  • I was surprised that running all 23 missed samples resulted in no infections. In terms of testing methodology, not sure I would have run all the malware simultaneously -- depending on how these samples attempt to infect, running them all concurrently could've affected their ability to infect the system.
  • Zemana seems to have identified 7-zip.dll as malicious. Seems like a false alarm to me.

Though there were no misses here, as far as F-Secure is concerned, it's worth mentioning that their BB, DeepGuard, is allegedly sensitive to how the files are introduced onto the system. In this case, the sample pack was extracted with F-Secure turned off completely. It's usually recommended to introduce the files via removable drive or network download, both of which cause DeepGuard to err on the side of suspicion. However, it seems like in the past 1-2 years, DeepGuard cares less about this (perhaps because this behavior made testing F-Secure difficult)
 

upnorth

Moderator
Verified
Staff Member
Malware Hunter
Well-known
Jul 27, 2015
5,457
The version in this video is 17.7 and was tested 2 months ago. F-Secure SAFE is since June 11th updated to version 17.8. Personal I'm more interested in tests on that and extra so as that update was a major one.

About it's scan capabilities, I personal can't and wouldn't final judge any vendor from one single test. This video shows the static scan got a 97,4 % detection rate/score. IMO that's not bad and absolutely not bad enough that one would have to jump on another solution just because of that result alone. I strongly advice people to collect more information before install and test products no matter the company/vendor or brand.

The dynamic tests was terrible performed IMO. Zero/no overview of outbound connections and no autoruns results. Several samples was also obviously not working and that could easy been tested, before. Something called WMaware could very well been a reason. Great that a reboot was finally made, but I have no idea why use a abandonware as SOS ( second opinion scanner ). Even Nortons Power Eraser is a much better choice for several reasons.
 
Last edited:

About us

  • MalwareTips is a community-driven platform providing the latest information and resources on malware and cyber threats. Our team of experienced professionals and passionate volunteers work to keep the internet safe and secure. We provide accurate, up-to-date information and strive to build a strong and supportive community dedicated to cybersecurity.

User Menu

Follow us

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter to know first about the latest cybersecurity incidents and malware threats.

Top