Antivirus; The German AV-TEST Anti-Virus Research Institute has conducted a new series of tests to determine how vendor software vendors manage to protect their programs by analyzing the use of ASLR and DEP technologies, the use of signed files and use HTTPS to deliver updates.
The results are not very encouraging, as some of the developing companies have not yet managed to protect their own products using these technologies. So, software with security loopholes that can be used by attackers to understand a system was observed.
Regarding ASLR (Randomization Layout Layout) and DEP (Data Execution Prevention) technologies, AV-TEST reports that leading products such as Avira, Bitdefender, Kaspersky και Symantec, χρησιμοποιούν αυτές τις τεχνολογίες ασφαλείας “Χωρίς εξαίρεση”, ενώ το AVG και το BullGuard είναι αρκετά κοντά με ένα σχεδόν τέλειο αποτέλεσμα.
“Other manufacturers such as Comodo, Emsisoft, Avast, McAfee, ThreatTrack, Quick Heal and K7 do not use it technology consistently. Their percentages range between 92,2 and 58,5%. Ahnlab, which had the lowest percentage, has ASLR & DEP at 36,3%,” reports AV-TEST.
With regard to signed files, not everyone seems to use this method. Signed files allow security products to recognize the developer of a particular application and check its integrity by determining whether malicious changes have occurred in a particular file.
And this time, top security suites like Bitdefender and Kaspersky use signed files, and in the case of Avira and AVG, they are not signed by 1 to 5 files or do not use valid certificates.
Finally, it seems that only 13 from 19 security products use HTTPS to distribute software and updates (Avira, Bitdefender, ESET and Kaspersky).
Worse, some of the antivirus vendors whose solutions have been tested by AV-TEST state that technologies such as ASLR and DEP can not be applied to their products.
"Some suppliers have informed the laboratory experts after our last tests that their products will never reach 100%, because they used protection technologies that were not compatible with ASLR and DEP. However, the manufacturers do not want to reveal the technologies they use ", reports from AV-TEST.
