14 DAY TRIAL // While most of us run antivirus solutions to prevent malware infections, there are times when such products are necessary in order to remove a virus that has already reached our data.
Research conducted by AV-TEST thus tries to determine which security tools we should use in case we just want to remove the malware and recover after a virus infection.
The test involved 7 security solutions 5 special tools for recovery, with a total of 830 individual tools performed between January and December 2018.
In the endurance test, security researchers used different approaches to determine how dedicated software reacts to a malware infection.
First of all, they installed the applications after a single malware attack took place, thus trying to determine whether all dangerous components were removed and the data was cleaned. Then, they installed a security product, temporarily disabled it, deployed malware, and then re-enabled the protection.
The third step was carried out with recovery tools that rely on bootable rescue media to detect and remove malware from an already compromised computer.
Top performers
Three different security products topped the charts, but none got a 100 percent score for clean-up performance. Avast Free Antivirus, Avira Antivirus Pro, and Bitdefender Internet Security completely cleaned 82 out of 88 infected systems, leaving behind harmless file remnants in just 6 cases.
Kaspersky Internet Security offered nearly similar performance, but it only cleaned 84 systems, with leftovers on 2 systems. However, in the case of 2 systems, Kaspersky failed to remove dangerous files.
Microsoft’s Windows Defender, which is the native solution in Windows 10, failed to detect malware on 2 systems and left behind one sample of dangerous malware.
As for recovery tools, Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool and Bitdefender Rescue Disk detected malware in all 44 tests, but in one instance, they both failed when trying to remove the virus. Kaspersky, however, topped the charts with 42 systems that were fully cleaned and 1 system where harmless leftovers were still there.
