Panda Cloud Antivirus

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* Fix for problems with outdated Silverlight installations.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.

Wow, that was one nerve-breaking never ending game, but finally Spain came out victorious after a brutal gloves-off match… OLE OLE OLE OLEEE, OLEEEE, OLEEEE!!

I have received literally hundreds and hundreds of emails from people around the world for the Panda Cloud Antivirus Pro Edition give-away. Seeing how much Spain had to overcome to win the World Cup championship, we have decided to give away 100 license keys instead of the original 20 we had announced.

If you are one of the lucky 100 winners, check your email as your license key is waiting in your inbox. If you’re not one of the lucky winners but still sent an email, check your email as well for a consolation prize

Juan Santana (Panda’s CEO) and I had to watch the game faaar away from home, in Palo Alto, California. Fortunately the people here were wonderful, almost everybody cheering for Spain. Thanks Palo Alto and VIVA ESPAÑA!!!

This idea is from users over at the CloudAV Support Forum.

Basically if Spain wins the World Cup 2010, I will be giving away 20 Panda Cloud Antivirus Pro Edition license keys for free to the first 20 people that send me an email to pedro.bustamante@pandasecurity.com *after* the game ends and only if Spain wins.

At the very least we’ll get more people cheering for Spain

Finally the new Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition and the new Panda Cloud Antivirus Pro are here!

After only 7 months since the release of PCAV 1.0 in November 2009, which has been download by almost 10 million users, the next major release of PCAV is finally available in two flavours: Free Edition and Pro.

Download your copy from http://www.cloudantivirus.com. NOTE: there’s no need to uninstall the previous version. The new version will automatically upgrade the one you have installed.

New features and changelog:

• Behavioural blocking. Proactive, signature-less, protection against malicious actions typically used by malware. Generic blocking of malicious PDF/DOC/XLS/PPT/WMV/etc. droppers. Compatible with both 32 and 64bit Operating Systems.
• Behavioural analysis (PRO only). Runtime analysis and blocking of running processes. Compatible with 32bits Operating Systems as well as for 32bit processes under 64bit systems.
• Advanced configuration. Ability to turn on/off and tweak the behaviour of the different engines, cloud responses, advanced logging, recycle bin settings, exclusions, etc.
• Self-protection of the AV processes and configurations.
• Re-do detections that were previously un-done so that they are detected again.
• Automatic upgrades (PRO only) to new engine versions and new features automatically and transparently.
• Improved offline protection. Default deactivation of Windows Autorun.
• USB vaccination (PRO only) Automatic vaccination of USB memory keys and hard drives.
• Ability to run alongside other AVs and Anti-Spyware. Can now be run alongside other security tools and scanners.
• Full scan option. Added option to run a full PC scan easily.
• More languages. Added 9 new languages. PCAV is now available in a total of 20 languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Greek, Polish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, Hungarian, Japanese, Slovak, Norwegian and Finnish.
• Quicker download & install experience thanks to new stub-installer which is 300kb in size.
• More options for restoring neutralized files. More flexibility when recovering neutralized files, allowing for automatic and manual recovery, exclusions, configuration of the Recycle Bin automatic emptying, path to recover, etc.
• Improved handling of known good files to reduce false positive rates by the new behavioural engine and automated classification from the Collective Intelligence servers.
• Optimized installation background scan by using adaptive low-priority scans.
• Improved scanning progress information by showing when a large compressed file is being scanned to avoid the perception that the stuck is stuck.
• Fixed certain situations when the PandaCloudTestFile.exe was not being detected even though the PC was correctly connected to the Internet.

Today marks an important day in the life of Panda Cloud Antivirus, the best free AV for two reasons. First of all this month is the one-year anniversary since we released the first beta. But more importantly today Collective Intelligence, the cloud-scanning backend infrastructure, has hit an important milestone: 100 million unique files analyzed. This means that our backend servers have automatically received, analyzed and created detection and disinfection routines for over 100 million unique files.

Some internal Collective Intelligence statistics that may be of interest to some of you:

• Types of files
• Malicious:  60.90%
• Goodware:  31.26%
• Under analysis:  7.84%
• New daily files
• Daily new unique files:  74009
• Of which are malware:  45738
• Backend servers
• Size of Collective Intelligence databases:   2.4 TB
• Daily logs from cloud-scanning server:   190 GB

Thanks to all Panda Cloud Antivirus users for helping us grow the Collective Intelligence community and improve the protection for all of us.

Today we are releasing a new version of Panda Cloud Antivirus, version 1.0.1. This version is basically a cumulative-fix release which incorporates Hotfix-1, Hotfix-2 and some small additional improvements.

The most notable improvement is that we have gotten rid of the initial account registration which used to be mandatory for first-time installs. Panda Cloud Antivirus will not ask for account during install anymore. Only if you want to participate in the Cloud Antivirus Support Forums will you need to create an account.

I have Cloud Antivirus 1.0 already installed. Do I need to download & install this version?
Not really. This new version incorporates hotfixes which you probably already have installed anyway. To check if you have them installed, simply browse to “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users” (XP) and you should see a subdirectory called “HF_PCA_somenumber”.

I have the hotfixes installed but I still have some problems with Panda Cloud Antivirus. Should I install this version?
Yes you might want to give it a try. Below you can find some more detail of what this version fixes which is not included in the existing hotfixes. In order to install this version on top of the one you already have, first uninstall your current version, then reboot and finally download & install the new version from http://acs.pandasoftware.com/cloud/CloudAntivirus.exe.

What’s the changelog of this version 1.0.1?

1. Preactivated version does not require account creation during install
2. Fix for certain conditions of stuck quick & full scan
3. Improved cloud-heuristic detection for unknown malware - From HF_2
4. Improved prevalence algorithms for priorization of new malware - From HF_2
5. Fix of problems scanning certain files in system directories - From HF_1
6. Fix for loss of connectivity after malware disinfection involving LSP - From HF_1
7. Improved cloud-heuristic detection - From HF_1

   
I would like to announce that Panda Cloud Antivirus, the best free antivirus, has received the official Windows 7 certification for 32 & 64 bits from Microsoft Corporation.

More details can be found here.

     
We have just uploaded a new poll to find out what was your previous antivirus before you installed Panda Cloud Antivirus.

You can participate and cast your vote here:
http://www.cloudantivirus.com/forum/poll.jspa?pollID=50051

Note: you will need an active Cloud Antivirus forum account to vote.

EDIT: I just reset the poll as some users reported problems submitting their votes. If you did submit correctly before, please vote again.

     
Which feature would you most like to see in the next version Panda Cloud Antivirus?

Take the poll and help us design the next versions of your new favourite antivirus:
http://www.cloudantivirus.com/forum/poll.jspa?pollID=50103