Q&A Impressed with ESET

[Guilhermesene]

Hello everyone from the community!

I am currently using Bitdefender, but I have a 3 year license of ESET Smart Security Premium (I had already used ESET for 3 years). I got a file here (which I downloaded from the internet), which is an activator of the Windows operating system, the only antivirus that detected the file as malicious is ESET. I am impressed to see how powerful ESET's detection engine is compared to other software that.



File scan: Virustotal

I'm thinking about going back to using ESET because all the malware I caught to test on the MalwareBazaar website was detected even though they were very recent, I even saw the detection being done by ML-Augur.

I am impressed to see how sensitive ESET is with regards to PUP/Adware detection. What is your opinion about the product? Is it worth switching to this product even if I lose remote control functionality (example Bitdefender Central)?

Sorry for this post, maybe unnecessary but I was impressed to see that only ESET detected the file.

Thank you guys from the community.

 

[amico81]

yes, eset offers one of the best protection against pups/unwanted software.
On default the protection is good, but you need to tweak some settings and HIPS for more layers of protection.
superb product of lightness. But i would stay with bitdefender if you have a license.
Bitdefender has a better behavior blocker...web protection on the same level ( my opinion).

 

[Guilhermesene]

yes, eset offers one of the best protection against pups/unwanted software.
On default the protection is good, but you need to tweak some settings and HIPS for more layers of protection.
superb product of lightness. But i would stay with bitdefender if you have a license.
Bitdefender has a better behavior blocker...web protection on the same level ( my opinion).

Thank you so much for your answer.

I'll think about it better, but your opinion was a great help to me

 

[Freud2004]

I am impressed to see how sensitive ESET is with regards to PUP/Adware detection. What is your opinion about the product? Is it worth switching to this product even if I lose remote control functionality (example Bitdefender Central)?

For me, it's a reason not to switch to ESET. KMS it's not a virus, it's not a Trojan, it's an application that it's used to make legit another application without their permission. Why ESET will be your conscience? Let me chose if I want to use a KMS or not, I want an antivirus not a digital conscience.... This is it's why I like Kaspersky, it doesn't care about KMS and friends in 80% of the situation.

 

[Nightwalker]

ESET is one of the best security solutions out there, consistently being a top tier product with a real nice balance of detection, false positive rate and system performance impact.

It is very good by default and can be extensively customized, it is one of the few antivirus that I dont have any reserves about and that can be used for any user in any environment , it is that good.

Now, for the question about changing from Bitdefender, if the latter is working, why bother?

 

[Zartarra]

I tested ESET a couple of months ago and it scored very well. Except the protection against ransomware was a bit weak. You can tweak the hips to protect some exe's that are common use such as powershell, cscript, wscipt, mshta, regsvr32, msbuild and certutil to name some.

You can find useful info at Configure ESET as default-deny (bye ransomware!).

 

[KonradPL]

I like ESET a lot. Eset is very solid, have a good protection.

 

[NewbyUser]

I wouldn't suggest changing your setup for a single detection. Particularly a file that is only detected by a single vendor, it's likely a false positive or a questionable detection. That being said both are good products, use whichever you prefer.

 

[cliffspab]

I was using their Internet Security until Defender Control started working on Windows 11 and i could go back to my beloved WiseVector/Glasswire.

I too was very impressed.Very streamlined, light and well designed. Less is more and Eset proves it.

 

[outlawxtorn]

ESET is great, I like to pair it with Voodoo Shield.

 

[Vitali Ortzi]

For me, it's a reason not to switch to ESET. KMS it's not a virus, it's not a Trojan, it's an application that it's used to make legit another application without their permission. Why ESET will be your conscience? Let me chose if I want to use a KMS or not, I want an antivirus not a digital conscience.... This is it's why I like Kaspersky, it doesn't care about KMS and friends in 80% of the situation.

Still eset is good for piracy and I had less false positives with it over Kaspersky but I use Kaspersky as it’s the best overall balance in my opinion basically similar performance or a tiny bit more then eset nowadays while protection is better

Personally I won’t touch bitdefender but by default it’s more secure then eset

 

[Anthony Qian]

This example cannot show how powerful ESET's engine is. The sample, as you said, is a Windows activator and different AV vendors have different viewpoints on it. Because such tools, if not trojanized, usually do no harm to your system, some antivirus software, such as Kaspersky, will not consider them malicious. Some antivirus vendors, such as ESET and Norton, have zero tolerance for "illegitimate" tools, therefore classifying them as a PUA or even a Trojan... It's just a matter of different detection criteria. When testing PUA, many AV testing organizations mainly focus on Adware, etc., instead of those samples in the gray area between clean and malicious.

 

[KonradPL]

This example cannot show how powerful ESET's engine is. The sample, as you said, is a Windows activator and different AV vendors have different viewpoints on it. Because such tools, if not trojanized, usually do no harm to your system, some antivirus software, such as Kaspersky, will not consider them malicious. Some antivirus vendors, such as ESET and Norton, have zero tolerance for "illegitimate" tools, therefore classifying them as a PUA or even a Trojan... It's just a matter of different detection criteria. When testing PUA, many AV testing organizations mainly focus on Adware, etc., instead of those samples in the gray area between clean and malicious.

it`s depend of user habits and what is better for him. Personaly I don`t accept activators, cracks, keygens etc. On the other hand it could be a way malware to infect OS

 

[roger_m]

For me, it's a reason not to switch to ESET. KMS it's not a virus, it's not a Trojan, it's an application that it's used to make legit another application without their permission. Why ESET will be your conscience? Let me chose if I want to use a KMS or not, I want an antivirus not a digital conscience.... This is it's why I like Kaspersky, it doesn't care about KMS and friends in 80% of the situation.

I agree. What matters to me is the detection of actual malware, rather than harmless cracks, PUPs etc.

 

[Anthony Qian]

it`s depend of user habits and what is better for him. Personaly I don`t accept activators, cracks, keygens etc. On the other hand it could be a way malware to infect OS

Before using such tools, my suggestion is that users should first look up their reputation in the Kaspersky Security Network. Some activators with high reputation are actually safe to use, which, of course, is not morally or legally right...

However, if they are blacklisted by Kaspersky, they might potentially corrupt your system and you should not use them. In fact, Kaspersky also classifies some potentially dangerous activators/keygens as PUP.

 

[Guilhermesene]

This example cannot show how powerful ESET's engine is. The sample, as you said, is a Windows activator and different AV vendors have different viewpoints on it. Because such tools, if not trojanized, usually do no harm to your system, some antivirus software, such as Kaspersky, will not consider them malicious. Some antivirus vendors, such as ESET and Norton, have zero tolerance for "illegitimate" tools, therefore classifying them as a PUA or even a Trojan... It's just a matter of different detection criteria. When testing PUA, many AV testing organizations mainly focus on Adware, etc., instead of those samples in the gray area between clean and malicious.

In reality I don't use pirated products. All software installed on my machine is licensed (such as Macrium Reflect among others), when I can't buy it, I look for a similar and free alternative (eg 7-zip) which for me is even better than paid software such as WinRar.

I didn't know that KMS was something legitimate, in my mind I always associated KMS with activators mainly from Windows.

At this point I returned a clean Windows image and I'm using KIS in default denial mode (to have another layer of security), but I confess that I was impressed with ESET regarding PUPS/Adware.

 

[omidomi]

Its belong to Eset policy against crack & patch....
detecting a crack dose not mean (oh its great detection....)
btw , Eset is good software (in level of detection...)

 

[Guilhermesene]

Its belong to Eset policy against crack & patch....
detecting a crack dose not mean (oh its great detection....)
btw , Eset is good software (in level of detection...)

This point of view from ESET is really interesting. I don't know why but, it registered in my mind that the software that detected these KMS files as malicious were great at protection (don't ask me why I think so), but now regarding your comment it opened my mind about it and I will certainly change of opinion.

 

[omidomi]

This point of view from ESET is really interesting. I don't know why but, it registered in my mind that the software that detected these KMS files as malicious were great at protection (don't ask me why I think so), but now regarding your comment it opened my mind about it and I will certainly change of opinion.

If you hate cracker & cracked software , YES , great company
but many companies just see that software hurt system or not , they do't attention to marked as cracked software as malware untill that do't hurt your system....

 

[Guilhermesene]

If you hate cracker & cracked software , YES , great company

Literally this is it