Panda Cloud Antivirus

Thanks to the millions who have downloaded and installed Panda Cloud Antivirus Beta1 (0.08.80) and sent feedback to help us improve the product before its final release. Today we’re releasing Panda Cloud Antivirus Beta2 (0.08.81).

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS
1- Uninstall the Beta1 from Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs. Reboot.
2- Download the Beta2 from http://www.cloudantivirus.com.
3- Install the Beta2.

BETA2 IMPROVEMENTS
We focused Beta2 on fixing the most important detection & disinfection aspects per feedback from the community. The following is a list of items that are either new or fixed in Beta2. If you have any doubts about any of them feel free to post your question as a comment.

New – “Undo” Option for Recycle Bin
Some users complained about the effect of the automated deletion of known malware. In some cases where users want these samples to not be deleted and/or in the case of false positives, there was no option to recover these files. A new option has been added with Beta2 to the Recycle Bin so users can recover deleted detections for a period of 3 days (configurable by CI). During this time period file icons will be changed to show that the file is quarantined in the Recycle Bin. NOTE: this does not apply to “disinfected” files, only to “deleted” files.

     

New – Synchronous Real-Time Cloud-Scan
Under some circumstances files being executed (directly from Internet download, from a read-only network share, etc.) were checked asynchronously against the cloud after the file was loaded into memory. This resulted in detection+disinfection actions to be taken after infection. With Beta2 we changed this behaviour to block the execution until a response has been received by Collective Intelligence. In the event that it is malware, the file will be deleted prior to allowing it to execute.

New – Latency & Response Control of the Cloud-Scanner
We deployed 10 sensors throughout America, Europe and Asia and have detected that 98.41% of the Collective Intelligence queries are responded to within 3 seconds. However, in the remaining cases there is not a control mechanism and if the response is not timely (because of connectivity issues, latency, proxy delays, etc.) then the program would be allowed to execute prior to receiving the response from Collective Intelligence. With the new response control mechanism, programs executing which take longer than 6 seconds to receive an answer from Collective Intelligence are put “on hold” for a second timeout period of 30 seconds after which the program is unblocked and allowed to execute (although it will continue being scanned asynchronously).

Fixed – Slow Scans
Right after installation Panda Cloud Antivirus launches a BackgroundScan of the entire PC to ensure it is clean. Some users reported that launching an On-Demand scan of the entire PC right after install slowed down the PC and/or caused the scan to take a long time. This bug was due to both the BackgroundScan and OnDemandScan running simultaneously. With Beta2 this is fixed by having the BackgroundScan automatically pause in case it detects an OnDemandScan being launched. Once the OnDemandScan is finished, the BackgroundScan will resumen where it left off.

Fixed – Recycle Bin Unblock Functionality
Under some circumstances and with certain types of malware, some users reported that unblocking a suspicious/potentially unwanted malware that was sent to the Recycle Bin, resulted in it being continuously detected over and over again. This has been fixed in Beta2.

Other Fixes

By the way, we’ll still release a Beta3 version prior to final release of Version 1.0. For Beta3 we’re already working on new platforms (Windows7, 64bits), improved features, a new website, a Collective Intelligence real-time encyclopedia and some additional things. Expect the Beta3 to be released around September.

 

The following issues have been detected by our beta testers which should be taken into consideration.

Installation / Uninstallation Issues

• During an incomplete uninstall, after reboot, the uninstall process cannot be finished. SOLUTION: We’re creating an uninstaller, but in the meantime please send us the log that is shown in the warning message.
• Cannot install after an incomplete install. SOLUTION: We’re creating an uninstaller, but in the meantime please send us the log that is shown in the warning message.
• Error while re-installing as a file cache is in use. SOLUTION: click “Retry” and allow the installation process to finish. It will complete successfully in spite of the warning message.

 

Application Issues

• Report takes a long time to show over 10.000 detections. WORKAROUND: as the Panda Cloud Antivirus Log is saved in the Windows Event Viewer, delete the corresponding Event Viewer Log before launching an on-demand scan over many files to help improve the responsiveness of the report viewer.
• The Recycle Bin (quarantine) takes a long time to show when there are many items in it.
• In the Event Report the name of the detected malware is shown as “Not available”. This means that either Internet connectivity was lost during the synchronization with Collective Intelligence or the malware naming webservice is not responding correctly.

 

Detection & Disinfection Issues

• Boot scan not performing correctly.
• Infected PE files which are not file-infectors and which are downloaded via HTTP, the product prompts for reboot disinfection even though it’s not really necessary.
• In infected compressed or packed containers which hold multiple elements, where at least one is infected, the product prompts for reboot disinfection even though it’s not really necessary.
• In some cases after disinfecting a file-infector virus the product notifies as “not neutralized” even though it was disinfected correctly and vice versa (in the case where the virus is in memory or the user does not have write-access to the directory respectively).
• Does not intercept nested Office file formats.
• When launching and on-demand scan over a very large number of malware samples the scan may be stuck at 99% of completion. SOLUTION: Disable BackgroundScan (will post details soon on how to do this).

 

As always we appreciate and welcome testing feedback so please keep them coming at beta@pandasecurity.com or in the form of comments on this blog.

Today we’re releasing the public beta of Panda Cloud Antivirus, which is the first free cloud-based antivirus thin-client. It consists of a lightweight antivirus agent that is connected in real-time to PandaLabs’ Collective Intelligence servers to protect faster against the newest malware variants while barely impacting PC performance.

Thanks to Panda Security’s Collective Intelligence malware and goodware online database, Panda Cloud Antivirus detects more malware than traditional signature-based solutions which take longer to detect the most recent, and therefore most dangerous, variants.

With Panda Cloud Antivirus we introduce a new protection model based on a thin-client agent & server architecture which services malware protection as opposed to locally installed products. By combining local detection technologies with cloud-scanning capabilities and applying non-intrusive interception techniques on the client architecture, Panda Cloud Antivirus provides some of the best protection with a lightweight antivirus thin-client agent that barely consumes any PC resources.

Our objective is to release a solution based on this new protection model which helps solve the malware problem by improving user experience. After almost 20 years fighting viruses and malware we have changed our mentality at Panda. We would like to open ourselves to you and show you how we pretend to do things. In this blog we’ll explain in depth how this new model works in order to help improve it with you, our users.

As for the beta objectives, we’re interested in collecting information from betatesters, evaluators, testers, etc. that can provide feedback on how the new protection model works under different scenarios in order to help us verify it as a valid model and to adapt it to real life.

Of course keep in mind that this is still beta code and as such we continue improving and tuning both the cloud architecture and detection techniques as well as the agent architecture, specially now during the initial phases. We’ll progressively release new versions which you’ll be able to use as we improve the overall protection and user experience.

Feel free to download Panda Cloud Antivirus if you haven’t done so yet. For suggestions please use the form located at www.cloudantivirus.com and for submitting bugs please use beta@pandasecurity.com.

Safe surfing,

Pedro Bustamante
Senior Research Advisor

http://research.pandasecurity.com