Dennis Technology Labs tested antivirus software by ensuring each product gets hit by precisely the same attack. It's meant to be as close as you can come to a real user's experience.

Every day for two months, the researchers select newly-discovered malicious sites and use a capture/replay system to present each of ten antivirus products with the exact same scenario.

The score rating runs from 300 to minus 500. Three points for stopping the attack before it hits your system. If the malware launches but then gets detected and cleaned up, that's still worth a point. And if the cleanup is complete, with no dangerous traces left, that's worth another point. A product that fails to detect the malware, or lets it damage the test system, loses five points.

Here are the results:



Source: PCMag