App Review Online Armor 5.0 Free RC Quick Look

[bogdan]

Just a quick look at the first Online Armor 5.0 release candidate from Emsisoft. This is the Free version. Also ran the Comodo Leak Test. Note that at some point OA offered the option to block the program but I de-selected it in order to allow all tests to run. Unlike previous free OA versions, 5.0 RC got a perfect score.

I won't label this video as a review and as Dieselman mentioned in this thread there are certain usability factor with HIPS applications that can be (for some users) more important than the score in a test. In the case of Online Armor their whitelist needs to be improved considerably to lower the number of pop-ups.

 

[bogdan]

If you want to view a test of OA 5.0 Free check out this video from TheIgster:
part 1
part 2

 

[Dieselman]

Look at all those pop ups. Now yo now what I meant.

 

[bogdan]

The main problem with OA is this: It doesn't offer a reliable way to protect novice users from their own actions. RunSafer could do this, but it needs to be enabled by the user. Even then the protection is equivalent with running as a normal user.

As for the pop-ups:
On OA-s defense the test was performed without an AV that could lower the number of pop-ups. Also some ot the pop-ups offered the possibility to block/stop the application (and no further pop-ups would appear). Technical terms are avoided (at least in my opinion).

On the other side: Most malware gets on a computer because a novice user is "tricked" into downloading and installing it. Therefore phrases like "If this alert appeared without a known action by you" might prevent drive-by malware or worms but in other cases are useless. Phrases like "If you trust the publisher..." also have little meaning for novice users as they probably downloaded the file from an untrusted source. If they actually have this notion of "a trusted publisher", UAC pop-ups on a standard account would protect them as well as OA. Even a bigger problem is that pop-ups appear for allot of good apps as well, this could make a novice user not trust/ignore warnings in pop-ups.

A possible conclusion could be that OA is not suited for novice users (nothing new for a HIPS product). Anyway, for OA users that are already familiar with this product the new version brings interesting improvements.

 

[jamescv7]

Those popups are hard for average user especially the popup told what you should do and state to investigate then the user will only hit allow in the case.