360 Internet Security FREE AV, triple engine

[YeOldeStonecat]

Went to look for something about the AV-Comparatives article on malware cleaning over at Wilders Security forums.

Saw a long thread about this new free antivirus....wicked long thread. Anyone that has spent time over there at Wilders know that many forum members there are a bunch of security and antivirus enthusiasts...and really get into various AV products and their effectiveness.

Out of over 50 pages so far of discussion of this new free AV product...majority seem to love it. The rest seem to think it's pretty good.

It uses the 3 engines of QVM, BitDefender, and 360 Cloud.
I believe QVM is from Qihoo

Some members seemed to think it was a fork of a product called Baidu AV.

Anyways...long thread here....
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=348585

This is the products page
http://www.360safe.com/pc.html

 

[AndyM]

I looked at this on Virus Bulletin. Came up with a webite of http://www.360.cn which looks vaguely similar to the one that Stoney mentioned. A few WildList misses in December 2011, and also in April 2012. Since then, it appears to have been a good performer.

Andy

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

While onsite today doing stuff, I uninstalled MSE from my laptop and installed this.

Large download, 201 megs. But installed quickly. My laptop is getting old, pokey...and although I expected to see some slowdown with this (since it has 3x AV engines)...she's running OK. Will see how it feels over next few days, and hopefully no false positives with my bunch of remote admin tools.

 

[SAG]

Been using it for a little while on a machine. It runs well enough, so far no false positives, but it did miss a few things that mbam would catch - nothing major though.

I'd have to say I dig it. Would definitely give it to my mom... if that says anything.

 

[Larry Sabo]

I don't trust a Chinese-based security solution, no matter how good, but that's just me.

 

[JustInspired]

I don't trust a Chinese-based security solution, no matter how good, but that's just me.

Yep, I thought that way for a long time but decided to give this a try on one of my laptops just to see. Pretty good so far.

Figured I use Chinese motherboards, routers, access points, phones etc so what the hell.

Not saying I'd use it for important PCs.

A bit about their plans for world domination here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/06/qihoo_security_world_beater/

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I don't trust a Chinese-based security solution, no matter how good, but that's just me.

That was my view ~15-10 years ago about Kaspersky....back when Russia was the big enemy.

And was initially resistant against becoming an Eset reseller around 10 years ago since it came from Slovakia....a very internet crime ridden country.

My fear of this 360 product was that it would have some adware in it pimping Qihoos tweaked browser with integrated search. Going on day 2...nothing. Will have to see how things go. I do like the interface, quite functional.

Just a note on default settings, only 360 and Bitdefender have their real time enabled....QVM is disabled for real time. But all 3 default to enabled on the manual scan. I'm turning on QVMs real time to see how it runs.

It has a sandbox feature which is cool for people that want security for web browsing...but don't use Chrome. (since Chrome has its own sandbox).

It recognized that I had Chrome as my default browser and suggested an extension for Chrome, a filter for phish/malware...and prompts you to get it from Googles app market, I'll install that to see if it's clean or does any adware stuff.

 

[cypress]

Keep us posted on your progress with this product, been looking for a product like this to try out. Installed ESET last night and really like it so far.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Keep us posted on your progress with this product, been looking for a product like this to try out. Installed ESET last night and really like it so far.

Eset is great....fantastic product, we use it for a lot of our clients. It's a "paid" product of course...I'm only looking at this product as a viable "Free" offering. As lots of us do free/cheap jobs for our friends/family/neighbors, etc...and turn to a free product. With MSE sliding in its effectiveness, and my dislike for other "naggy" free offerings like Avira and Avast which constantly nag to purchase the pro product, I'm always looking for other good free AV options.

 

[SpaceSquad]

What is their revenue stream?

Others survive by paid versions and/or toolbar/search hijackers being placed on at install.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What is their revenue stream?

Others survive by paid versions and/or toolbar/search hijackers being placed on at install.

From all I've read....it seems to be the browsers they supply for the .CA market, as well as search engines for over there. I'm no familiar with the internet in China...but I believe it's quite locked down.

That same concern was discussed in great length over at the Wilders security forums...in the link I provided. They talked about Qihoos customized version of Internet Explorer with an embedded search (it's a green "E" instead of the usual blue E we're used to).

So far...I have not seen any evidence of adware...not even a hint of it. Nor have any at Wilders from what I read from that lengthy thread.

How long that remains true? Dunno. Hopefully they don't start with adware and toolbars.

Appears to not be licensed for use by businesses...only for home users.
So doesn't replace MSE for those situations.

I'll bump up that "free antivirus" thread I started last year. Make sure this one is mentioned in it.

 

[joydivision]

I simply cannot trust it for client machines, it seems a bit too good to be true. They must make money from us some how or they would not offer it to the west.

It costs a lot of money to support an anti virus program and they must be paying BitDefender etc money to use their database.

 

[NYJimbo]

I wont put a Chinese A/V on anyones machine after what I went through with Rising A/V. A few years ago some other techs recommended it to me for a lightweight free a/v so I installed it on a bunch of customers machines. Over the course of the next few months people started complaining that they didn't trust a Chinese program on their computer due to all the shenanigans ours and their governments go through so I had to help remove them and install another. Rising recently stopped supporting all English language versions of their A/V so anyone who speaks English and is using Rising is screwed.

I don't want to go through that again.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Rising recently stopped supporting all English language versions of their A/V so anyone who speaks English and is using Rising is screwed.
.

But how often do users of a FREE AV call up support?
You like Avast for your free one right? Are you fluent in Czech?

 

[NYJimbo]

But how often do users of a FREE AV call up support?
You like Avast for your free one right? Are you fluent in Czech?

My point is that the customers don't like Chinese security software and there is now no support, that is no website or forum, etc, in English.

Avast has tons of support in English.

 

[cypress]

Eset is great....fantastic product, we use it for a lot of our clients. It's a "paid" product of course...I'm only looking at this product as a viable "Free" offering. As lots of us do free/cheap jobs for our friends/family/neighbors, etc...and turn to a free product. With MSE sliding in its effectiveness, and my dislike for other "naggy" free offerings like Avira and Avast which constantly nag to purchase the pro product, I'm always looking for other good free AV options.

This is exactly what I was looking for it. Friends and family that I had previously installed MSE on, I wanna start looking for something cheap but reliable.

 

[Xander]

It recognized that I had Chrome as my default browser and suggested an extension for Chrome, a filter for phish/malware...and prompts you to get it from Googles app market, I'll install that to see if it's clean or does any adware stuff.

What's the name of that extension? I'm putting Adblock+ on all systems now (to help minimize those Big Green Download tricks) but I'd be even keener on a decent phishing-type filter.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What's the name of that extension? I'm putting Adblock+ on all systems now (to help minimize those Big Green Download tricks) but I'd be even keener on a decent phishing-type filter.

Went to find it, never did. Haven't gone back 'n looked.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

So anyways...been reading up on Qihoo, and its competitor...Baidu.
They're the two big heavyweights in the internet arena in China. Both battling for top spot in the internet services, apps, searches, all that stuff. Sorta like Google vs Bing vs Yahoo I suppose.

So I head over to my old forums that I'm staff at, Speedguide.net
Make a post there about the free antivirus products. I step back to an admin view of who's on the forums.
And oddly enough, on the first page of bots that are shown scouring the forums, > 50% of them are "Baidu Spider". Used to mostly just be Yahoo, Google, Bing...dominating, but today...most of the spiders harvesting data from the boards were Baidu.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

So only feedback on this, my laptop took an extra ~20 seconds to latch onto my wireless connection. This AV product seemed to wrap itself around the TCP stack in a way that just made my wireless take a bit longer to latch on...when I cracked open the lid of my laptop. Wireless connection status would show disconnected for about 10 seconds..and then the spinning circle for another 10 maybe 15 seconds, until she was good.

Regular NIC didn't exhibit that behavior. But for the way I use my laptop every day, that got kinda annoying.

Otherwise...no other odd behavior from the product. Didn't see ads, or nags, or anything obtrusive.

I think it, or its cousin Baidu, are worth considering...given some more time. With some people uneasy about them coming from China, perhaps they need to stay around for a while longer to prove themselves.