Serious Discussion How Antivirus Works? Dynamic and Behavioral Detection

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Glad you found the video by Motasem Hamdan helpful! It indeed provides a clear explanation of how dynamic and behavioral detection in antivirus works. If you have any questions or points to discuss, feel free to share.
 

Andy Ful

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Examples.

Avast:

Bitdefender:

Emsisoft:

Eset:

Microsoft Defender:

1740005009932.png


Kaspersky:

1740003155429.png




ProofPoint:

Symantec:
 

Andy Ful

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Microsoft Defender and Kaspersky have excellent behavioral detection based on Machine Learning models. So why Kaspersky AV can score better in Real-World tests?
https://malwaretips.com/threads/the...4-av-test-av-comparatives.134865/post-1117751

The answer is probably included in the video:



As we can see, some FUDs (Fully UnDetectable malware) are detected only after the execution, when some malicious actions are already done. Microsoft decided to fight such malware as follows:
  1. Enabled SmartScreen (in Edge and for Windows Explorer).
  2. Enabled ASR rules (especially the rule "Block executable files from running unless they meet a prevalence, age, or trusted list criteria").
  3. Post-execution behavioral detection.
If the user has enabled SmartScreen, the FUDs are mainly blocked, so there is no visible difference between Microsoft Defender (MD) and top AVs.

If SmartScreen is disabled or the user ignores SmartScreen alerts, enabling advanced settings in MD is necessary to prevent efficiently FUDs. If not, then MD uses post-execution behavioral detection which is as good as for Kaspersky, but Kaspersky can efficiently reverse the changes made by the Malware (like encrypted files), and MD often cannot.

Edit.
One could ask: Can such MD post-execution protection be useful?
Yes, it can (although imperfect). The first victim is infected, but others will be protected in a few minutes.
 
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Andy Ful

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In the last two years, Panda Free was tested by AV-Comparatives (2 awards per 4 Real-World tests), once by AV-Test (Panda Dome, 1 award). The results were similar to Microsoft.
Panda scored worse in SE Labs tests in the category "Targeted attacks". But at home, the protection should be similar to Microsoft (for similar reasons).

1740161882432.png


So yes, it seems that Panda's behavioral detection can be similar to top AVs. However, behavioral detection is only one of the protection layers.
 
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roger_m

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In the last two years, Panda Dome was tested by AV-Comparatives (2 awards per 4 Real-World tests), once by AV-Test (1 award). The results were similar to Microsoft.
Panda scored worse in SE Labs tests in the category "Targeted attacks". But at home, the protection should be similar to Microsoft (for similar reasons).
While it does well when tests by testing organisations, when it's been tested @Shadowra it does very badly. It also did badly when it was tested in the Malware Hub here. For example in the second test I've linked to, out of 190 malware samples, 50 remained. Panda is slow to add signatures for new threats and I presume it is doing well in tests by testing organisations, because as is often speculated, they aren't testing against the very latest malware.


 

Andy Ful

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Panda offers a solution for businesses, Panda Adaptive Defense 360.



1740161109395.png
 
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