A recent test at untangle presented some concerning results regarding antivirus solutions. After testing some of the most popular tools on the market, with a sample of 18 viruses (not sure how relevant this sample is), only three candidates managed to detect all the viruses: Kaspersky, Norton and ClamAV. Even more surprising is the fact that one of the contestants detected less than 10% of the viruses.

I was always intrigued by the lack of free antivirus tools available, let alone open source ones. Avast Antivirus is one of them (though not open source), but it's not even present in the test - which makes me wonder about its reliability.

ClamAV definitively looks like a winner - and the fact that it's an open source project, with a Windows version as well (ClamWin) - really makes it an ideal candidate. There is however a drawback; the current version does not provide on-access virus scan (though it's a planned feature), therefore it should be used mostly as a second tool (when was the last time you did a full system scan anyway?).

As a side note, I did a little Google search on ClamAV and other antivirus benchmarks. The published results were similar, with the exception that ClamAV/ClamWin didn't get as much attention. Kaspersky won the test again, but only with their online scan tool.

In conclusion, it does matter what antivirus tool you use - but it doesn't matter how much you pay for it. Kaspersky online scan is free, the same goes for ClamWin (open source) - both of them being excellent performers.