Microsoft Corporation yesterday acknowledged poor test results of its OneCare antivirus software, but promised it would do better by paying more attention to malware actually in the wild. Earlier this month, AV Comparatives, a non-profit site that tests the most popular antivirus products, found OneCare detected 82.4% of nearly half a million pieces of malware. Early last month, Virus Bulletin, a U.K.-based publication that put 15 Vista security programs up against January"s WildList, found that Microsoft"s Windows Live OneCare 1.5 failed the test, among four others.
"The recent detection numbers were not stellar. We missed capturing a VB100 [Virus Bulletin 100] in the last test because we missed one virus. As a result, we have adopted new methodologies to ... look more closely at families of viruses that have been found to be "in the wild," [those] found actively spreading among users. We will keep on working to acquire the VB100 Award each time we are tested by Virus Bulletin. You will see our results gradually and steadily increase until they are on par with the other majors in this arena," wrote Jimmy Kuo, a member of the Microsoft security research and response team, on a company blog. Kuo also noted that Microsoft would put more resources into identifying what he called "truly important malware."