Spyware Warrior

[groze]

I am sure clamwin is a good program.

Wouldn't a virus or spyware program be able to hide from it? Couldn't someone read the code of clamwin and program a virus or spyware to hide from it?

[roger_m]

Viruses and spyware can hide fron any antivirus program.

But in reality they are not "hiding" it's just that the particular virus or spyware is not recognised by the program.

Clamwin just like all antivirus programs uses viruses definition files in order to identify viruses and other malware. There are usually updated at least daily, and the antivirus software will download the updated definition files and then identify new viruses.

If information on a particular virus has not been added to the definition files, then the antivirus software will not be able to find the virus on an infected computer as it does not know how to recognise the virus. (Although most a/v software uses heuristics to try to identify unknown viruses and malware - usually they don't do a very well at this, and most unknown viruses and malware will not be picked up).

From this point of view, what you are talking about has nothing to do with someone looking at the code of Clamwin in order to exploit it, but rather if the programmers have not added a particular virus to the virus definition files, then the virus will not be identified.

[suzi]

Clam Win does not provide any real time protection. It is a scanner only.

http://www.clamwin.com/

From what I've read, it does not have very high detection rates of new malware. If you want a free AV, I would consider Avira and Avast.
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Former Microsoft MVP 2005-2009, Consumer Security
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