Panda Cloud Antivirus

AV-Test.org has just released the September & October test results of its Full Product Monthly tests. More information at http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/test-reports/. This is the second batch of test reports in which Panda participates with Panda Cloud Antivirus FREE Edition.

Of course we are happy to see that Panda Cloud Antivirus FREE Edition has achieved certification with some good scores. But I would like to focus this post on the performance part of the test, which is where Panda Cloud Antivirus FREE Edition has really shined. Of course an AV product needs to detect as much malware as possible with as little false positives as possible. But nowadays the top AV products are very aligned in both these respects. So what is it that makes the difference then when choosing an AV? Many people will say its the performance and how it behaves on your individual system. Will it slow you down? Will it consume too much memory or CPU cycles? How will it impact your system? Many times a big performance hit will make the best of AVs with the highest detection rates and lowest FPs useless if they don’t allow the user to work with his or her PC.

There are some (not many) AV performance tests out there. Unfortunately most of the are sponsored by such or such vendor, which is not ideal as the vendor pays for the test and therefore choose what the test should look at, which coincidentally will be the performance areas the sponsoring vendor is good at, instead of looking at the overall performance hit. The Passmark tests sponsored by Symantec are a good example of this. Eugene has a good criticism of these type of sponsored tests (google it). Luckly the AV-Test performance review looks at the overall performance hit and this is where the architectural design of CloudAV really shows how it improves performance over traditional AV:

AV-Test.org September/October 2011 Full Product Test Reports available at http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/test-reports/

Hot off the trails of the great debut of Panda Cloud Antivirus at AV-Comparatives with an Advanced+ rating, now Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition is also taking part of the Full Product / Real-World tests of AV-Test.org.

The results are pretty good. Both Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition and Panda Internet Security 2012 achieved some of the top scores in protection. In addition Panda Cloud Antivirus achieved very good scores for usability, with very little slowdown of the test computers and zero false positives (when the industry average for this test was 17 false positives).

The full reports can be read online for both Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition and Panda Internet Security 2012.

AV-Comparatives.org just published its latest detection test. This test takes into consideration detection of recent malware as well as false positives. This is the first time that Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition participates in AV-Comparatives.org independent tests.

We’re happy to announce that the results couldn’t be much better. Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition achieved the highest rating (Advanced+) by being one of the AVs with the highest detection and lowest false positive ratings of the 20 products tested. Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition even got higher scores both in detection and false positives than paid-for security solutions from Kasperspky, ESET, McAfee, Trend Micro and Symantec and also higher scores than other free solutions by Avast and AVG.

You can read the full report at AV-Comparatives.org testing site.

NOTE: if your Panda Cloud Antivirus has upgraded successfully to version 1.5.1 and you are getting constant notifications on the traybar about the upgrade, please reboot your computer to finish the upgrade and these notifications will stop.

We are happy to announce the availability of Panda Cloud Antivirus version 1.5.1. If you are reading this after seeing a “Panda Cloud Antivirus has upgraded automatically!” message on your Desktop traybar, then you already have this latest version installed and running. If you don’t have version 1.5.1 yet don’t worry. As we are releasing the automatic and transparent upgrade little by little in a few days your copy of Panda Cloud Antivirus will upgrade itself automatically.

Version 1.5.1 is a maintenance upgrade from version 1.5.0 which fixes some bugs reported by the user community. The bug fixes included are the following:

• Fixed problems disinfecting Google Chrome cookies.
• Fixed problems disinfecting certain compressed malware.
• Fixed Blue Screen of Death problem after upgrading or installing version 1.5.
• Fixed bug which prevented re-enabling autorun.
• Fixed errors when redirecting to webpages from the “I like CloudAV” window.
• Security Toolbar and URL Filter version 2.0.0.17 with Firefox 5.0 compatibility.

Remember that if you have any problems whatsoever with Panda Cloud Antivirus you can always ask for help at our Technical Support Forum.

Also if you like Panda Cloud Antivirus don’t forget to help us grow the community of  users. The more we are, the better protection we get. Make sure to click on the “I like CloudAV” button on the main window to easily protect your community of friends and family by letting them know about Panda Cloud Antivirus.

We are happy to announce the availability of Panda Cloud Antivirus version 1.5. If you are reading this after seeing a “Panda Cloud Antivirus has upgraded automatically!” message on your Desktop traybar, then you already have this latest version installed and running. If you don’t have version 1.5 installed yet don’t worry. As we are releasing the automatic and transparent upgrade little by little in a few days your copy of Panda Cloud Antivirus will upgrade itself automatically.

This keyword of this release is improved performance. In addition new features suggested by the user community have been added as well.

• Scanning speeds have been improved dramatically.
• CPU consumption has been reduced thanks to improvements in the BackgroundScan.
• New graphical installer.
• Ability to close the banner.
• New advanced configuration options for exclusions of files by extension, Potentially Unwanted Programs and more.
• Activity monitor shows scanned files and last virus detected.
• Report now includes entries for Collective Intelligence cache synchronizations.

In addition there are a lot of bug fixes, most notably:

• Fixed error when trying to open Panda Cloud Antivirus right after install.
• Fixed problems registering with Windows Security Center.
• Fixed access violation in PSUNSuspects.dll when opening console.
• Fixed protected Lost&Found directory privileges which prevented restoration of files.
• Fixed Error Code 11 when trying to undo an exclusion for a file which has been deleted from the drive.
• Fixed Error Code 11 when trying to insert into the Recycle Bin a file which was also excluded from the scan.
• Fixed error which prevented opening the GUI and showing the traybar icon.

Don’t forget to help us grow the community of Panda Cloud Antivirus users. The more we are, the better protection it provides. Now there’s a “I like CloudAV” button on the main window to easily protect your community of friends and family.

We’re happy to announce that Panda Cloud Antivirus (both Free and PRO) are available for users of Toshiba AppStore over at http://apps.toshiba.com

The Toshiba AppStore is filled with very cool cloud-based applications made available to millions of Toshiba laptop users. They can now choose to install Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition or even subscribe on a monthly billing basis to Panda Cloud Antivirus PRO.

As you can imagine the entire Panda Cloud Antivirus team is very excited about the news!

We are happy to announce that we just released Panda Cloud Antivirus version 1.3. This new version of Panda Cloud Antivirus has been made possible thanks to our large community of users and specially to our Support Forum Trusted Mods who have helped a lot of users and gathered enough feedback to incorporate major improvements as well as many different bug fixes. All new features have been included in both the Free and Pro Edition.

If you have Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.1.0, 1.1.1 or 1.1.2, you will get the upgrade automatically and transparently over the course of the next few days (see below for details). If you don’t have Panda Cloud Antivirus installed yet you can download it from www.cloudantivirus.com.

The main new features and fixes included in Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.3 are the following:

• Malicious Web & URL Filtering. This feature blocks websites that push malware, exploits and drive-by downloads. It is available both in Free and in Pro Editions and is installed by the toolbar. Unlike similar solutions, this web filtering works at a low level so it works under all browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc. For those of you that didn’t install the toolbar but would like to install the Web & URL Filtering, you can download it from here and install it manually.
• Unified Recycle Bin and Quarantine. Previously the Recycle Bin handled suspicious detections and the Quarantine handled deleted malware detections. This has been unified into a new Recycle Bin for ease of management. This is included in both Free and Pro Editions.
• Automatic and transparent upgrades to new product versions, previously only available in the Pro Edition, this is now available in the Free Edition as well. All users of Free Editions versions 1.1.0, 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 will automatically and transparently upgrade to the new 1.3. See notes below for the upgrade schedule.
• No more nagging advertising. After listening to many of you we have decided to turn off the nagging advertising popups prompting to upgrade to Pro Edition. If you want to support Panda Cloud Antivirus and wish to get the Pro Edition, you can do so from here, but we won’t bug you anymore from the popups.
• Hot updating of behavioural blocking rules. In order to increase protection on the fly against new vulnerabilities and attacks and to fix false positives, hot updating of behavioural blocking rules allows faster response time in both the Free and Pro Editions.
• Immediate notifications of virus detections. Previously if Panda Cloud Antivirus encountered multiple viruses, it would delay its traybar notification and show them grouped. This behaviour has been changed so that the notifications are shown immediately.
• Suspicious detection counter. Under the statistics window there’s some new counters for the different types of heuristics and behavioural detections.
• New versioning format. Unified versioning format in GUI and other parts of the program.
• Many bugfixes as reported by users in our support forum:
  – Fixed issue with Windows 7 Start menu slow-down.
  – Fixed Panda traybar icon disappearing.
  – Fixed “you are not connected to the Internet” message when there is connection.
  – Fixed issue when Free Edition users can activate behavioural analysis.
  – Fixed slow-down and conflicts while playing Allods Online and AION.
  – Fixed cloud-response time configuration which defaults to 30 seconds.
  – Fixed constant accesses to the floppy disk drive.
  – Fixed BSOD issue after install.
  – Fixed bug while exporting an empty report to TXT/CSV.
  – Fixed Conficker detection.
  – Fixed BSOD while compressing malicious PDFs.
  – Fixed translation errors.

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In case you still have some questions about Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.3, here are some frequently asked questions. If you don’t find an answer to your question please contact us at the support forum.

When will my Panda Cloud Antivirus upgrade itself?
The automatic and transparent upgrade to the new Panda Cloud Antivirus version 1.3 will happen progressively over the next week or two. Initially users of version 1.1.0 will be upgraded automatically and some days later users of 1.1.2. Finally users of version 1.1.1 will be upgraded automatically.

What if I don’t want to wait for the automatic upgrade?
Simply go to www.cloudantivirus.com, download the new 1.3 version and install it on top of you current one. As you run the installer, it will prompt you to unsintall your current version and, after a reboot, will install the new one. If you have any problems please contact us at the tech support forum.

My Panda Cloud Antivirus has been upgraded but I cannot see the Web & URL Filtering Toolbar
The Web & URL Filtering component is installed by the toolbar. If you don’t already have the toolbar installed (or you uninstalled it) then the automatic upgrade will not install the new toolbar (the automatic ugprade keeps the same config as you currently have). If that is the case, you can manually download and install the new Web & URL Filtering Toolbar from here.

I know I’ve installed the Web & URL Filtering Toolbar but want to “see” it in action
There is nothing visible in the toolbar like a button to “see” the Web & URL Filter. Simply make sure there is a process running on your computer called panda2_0dn.exe and you’re good to go. If you don’t see the panda2_0dn.exe process running, install the Panda Security Toolbar manually from here. You can test that the filter is working by trying to visit http://www.cloudantivirus.com/testurlfilter

How do I disable the Web & URL Filtering?
– Go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs and uninstall “Panda Security Toolbar URL Filtering”.
– If you only want to disable the filtering for a short time, simply kill the “panda2_0dn.exe” process.
– For those of you wanting to visit malicious pages and/or to manage potential false positives, very soon we will add an exclusion button in the blocked pages so that you can bypass the Web & URL filter.

I have and older Panda Cloud Antivirus, version 1.0.x. What should I do?
You can do one of two things:
– Wait for an automatic upgrade. We are developing an automatic upgrade for users of 1.0. It should be released in a few weeks.
– Manually upgrade to the new version 1.3. Simply download the new version from www.cloudantivirus.com and run it. It will prompt you to uninstall the previous version and, after a reboot, install the new one. If you have any problems please contact us at the tech support forum.

So what’s the difference between Free and Pro now?
You can see the feature-to-feature comparison in the following table. As you can see we have added many new things to the Free Edition to make Panda Cloud Antivirus the best free antivirus available anywhere!

We just published version 1.1.2 of Panda Cloud Antivirus. You can get it from http://www.cloudantivirus.com.

This minor release includes some basic fixes:

* Fix for error 1603 during install or upgrade from previous versions.
* Fix for behaviour blocker FPs of WMP, VLC, OpenOffice, fubar2000, etc.
* Corrections of certain string translations (italian, japanese, etc.).
* Search reset fix during installation.
* Fix for problems with outdated Silverlight installations.
* Updated traybar notifications to show that they come from PCAV.

Users of the Free Edition can upgrade to this new version by simply downloading the new installer and executing it. The installer will uninstall the previous version and install the new one after a reboot.

Users of the Pro Edition do not need to upgrade to this new version as their installation will be upgraded automatically and transparently as needed.

We published another survey to find out which AV folks were using before switching over to Panda Cloud Antivirus.

Make sure to drop by and vote. You can do so here:
http://www.cloudantivirus.com/forum/poll.jspa?pollID=50108

You will need an active account at the CloudAV Support Forum in order to vote.If you don’t have one just click on the poll and then “access to account” on the upper-right corner.

As you’ve probably heard by now there’s a very nasty 0-day vulnerability in Adobe (CVE-2010-1297) that’s being used to infect people using drive-by exploits from infected websites. Of course all AV vendors are currently struggling and in a hurry to release updated signatures to detect the different variations of malicious PDF files that are being released into the wild.

Thanks to the Behavioural Blocking engine, users of Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition do not need to worry about this or any other Adobe 0-day as these types of exploits are blocked generically and automatically.

In the following video by Sean-Paul from PandaLabs you can see how PCAV blocks these 0-day exploits generically.

Thanks Sean-Paul & David from PandaLabs for all your work with KRE.