From: rslade@sfu.ca
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Review of F-prot (PC)
Date: 10 Nov 92 07:43:55 GMT

PCFPROT.RVW   921107
                    Antiviral Protection Comparison Review
 
Company and product:
 
Fridrik Skulason
Frisk Software International
Postholf 7180
IS-127 Reykjavik
Iceland
+354-1-694749
fax: +354-1-28801
frisk@complex.is
F-PROT 2.xx Virus detection/protection/disinfection
 
Summary: Highly recommended for any situation.  Best "value for cost" of any
package reviewed to date.               
 
Cost: free for non-commercial personal use, Site license $1(US) per computer
(minimum $20), 25% educational discount
 
Rating (1-4, 1 = poor, 4 = very good)
      "Friendliness"
            Installation      3
            Ease of use       4
            Help systems      3
      Compatibility           3
      Company
            Stability         3
            Support           3
      Documentation           3
      Hardware required       4
      Performance             4
      Availability            3
      Local Support           ?
 
General Description:
 
Scanning, resident scanning and disinfection capabilities.  The informational
utilities present in the earlier (1.xx) versions have been replaced by
heuristic analysis scanning.  Change detection and operation restricting
utilities have been removed and not replaced.
 
 
                  Comparison of features and specifications
 
 
 
User Friendliness
 
Installation
 
Installation is now added as a feature in the main program.  Manual
installation is still an option, and is likely the one most used by those
familiar with the program.  Since the program is shareware, and since
installation is little more than copying of files, unless VIRSTOP is installed,
it is unlikely to present any problems.
 
In the automated installation, VIRSTOP is installed to be invoked from
AUTOEXEC.BAT.  Those wishing to invoke it from CONFIG.SYS must do the
installation manually.
 
Ease of use
 
Except for resident scanning, F-PROT is now invoked from a single program.  The
user, by default, is presented with a graphical interface, but command line
switches are an option for those wanting more speed, or a standard invocation
for a large group of users.
 
There is no "help" key, but the options are fairly simple, and explained in
text boxes where necessary.
 
Help systems
 
There is no help per se, although a listing of command line switches is
available.
 
Compatibility
 
F-PROT consistently maintains the highest ratings in all independent tests of
scanning of known viral programs, including my own.  In terms of disinfection
capability, only Alan Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit has similar ratings.
 
Because of an external language file, F-PROT is available in at least six
languages, and can be readily translated into others.
 
Sporadically, F-PROT will fail to scan large drives which are divided into
multiple partitions.  This problem is fairly rare.  It has been addressed, but
it is unknown as to the success in all situations.
 
There have been ongoing reports of problems installing the VIRSTOP resident
program under MS-DOS 5.0.  Moving VIRSTOP in the boot sequence, particularly
with respect to memory managers, generally is successful in alleviating the
problem.
 
The heuristic analysis portion of the program occasionally generates a "false
positive" alert about a program that is not, in fact, infected.  This is to be
expected from this type of scanning, and the incidence is much reduced from
when this function was first included with the program.  The heuristic analysis
feature has been generally effective in identifying new and "unknown" viral
strains, but is not perfect.  (Perfection is, of course, inherently
unattainable in this type of program.)  Indeed, the documentation for this
feature states that it is still to be considered experimental, and is very
conservative in its claims.  Programs known to cause false positives are
listed.
 
F-PROT may be run under Windows, but is not a Windows program.  This is planned
to be addressed in future, as are improvements for VIRSTOP to make it run with
Windows, and to check files as they are copied, to check floppy disks as
accessed, and to use EMS memory.
 
Company Stability
 
Fridrik Skulason has left the university, and is concentrating full time on the
research and development of this product.  His company now employs four staff
in addition to himself.  F-PROT is being included in commercial programs, and a
commercial version of F-PROT will be announced shortly.  frisk has, however,
committed to continuing to support the shareware version.
 
Company Support
 
Fridrik Skulason is available through the Internet, and replies to queries can
be expected within a week or less.  Recently the program has become much more
popular with the general public, and numerous people have requested his Fidonet
address.  Unfortunately, frisk is not active on either Fidonet or VirNet.
 
Documentation
 
Being shareware, the package has no printed documentation.  The text files
included with the programs are very clear and thorough, and provide an
excellent primer on virus functions and protection, as it relates to scanning
and disinfection.  The large single USAGE.TXT file has been broken into smaller
"chapter" files, which allows for quicker access to a particular function or
feature.
 
As some of the other virus detection and prevention capabilities have been
dropped from the package, so the very excellent discussions of the different
types of antiviral software, and their strengths and weaknesses, have been
dropped from the documentation.  It is recommended that interested parties
obtain old (1.xx) versions of F-PROT for this material.
 
The virus information files previously contained in separate text files have
been included as a virus information feature within the main program.
 
Hardware Requirements
 
No special hardware is required.
 
Performance
 
During testing, FPROT has consistently identified more viri than the "current
release" of any other product.  FPROT is generally slower at scanning because
of the multiple signatures being used to check for each virus, but is not the
slowest scanner tested.
 
The user is in control of FPROT at all times, with the exception that
VIRSTOP will not allow the boot sequence to continue in the case of a boot
sector infection at startup.
 
FPROT, in two years of my testing, has not given a false positive alarm on any
normal program, nor has it interfered with any normal program operation.
 
The various functions and utilities that have been dropped from the 2.xx
version programs still have significant value.  Serious virus researchers and
consultants would do well to obtain copies of older (1.xx) versions.  These
have been retained, and are available, at better antiviral source sites.
 
Local Support
 
Since FPROT is shareware, there are no local dealers to obtain support from. 
FPROT has fewer users in North America than SCAN, and so local help may be
harder to obtain, but the documentation should make up any deficiencies.
 
For users in Europe, FPROT is available in places as a commercially distributed
product.
 
Support Requirements
 
Very little support should be needed for this program.  On occasion assistance
my be needed in disinfection, or in positively identifying a new viral strain,
but no product tested deals with this situation better than F-PROT.
 
                                 General Notes
 
Because of its "shareware" distribution, FPROT is best compared against John
McAfee's SCAN program.  F-PROT is kept up to date with regular additions to the
signature file, and constant improvements to the program.  SCAN versions are
released at approximately the same frequency as FPROT, but in two and a half
years FPROT releases consistently identified more viri, and with greater
accuracy than did the "same level" releases of SCAN.  SCAN also needs to
release far more "bug fix" versions than does F-PROT.  Fridrik Skulason
publishes fewer signatures of new viri on the VIRUS-L (Usenet comp.virus)
distribution lists than he used to, but some others are supplying appropriate
signature strings in his format.  F-PROT is significantly cheaper than the SCAN
suite as well, and is complete in one package, although the SCAN suite in total
now offers some edge in utility.
 
I am personally sorry to see that the former utilities are not included in the
current package.  However, it is unarguably simpler for novice users to install
and use the newer package, free from the confusion of the multiplicity of files
contained in the previous version.
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1990, 1992   PCFPROT.RVW   921107

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