Macro virus NOT detected

[truthiness]

I have a Word macro virus, W97M.Marker, you can see it in the VBA editor (& manually clean it if you want).

iAntiVirus seems just what I need since it says it detects & cleans macro virii. So I installed it, updated it, & ran it on a test directory with 2 infected files. But it found NO virii. What?!? This virus has been around for 10 years, how can iAntiVirus miss this?

[truthiness]

I was shocked no one responded to this post. Confused, I dug deeper. Well, I can't find what link led me to iAntivirus that claimed iAV detected & cleaned macro viruses, because apparently it doesn't. iAV makes no such claim & other reviews cite that macro detection is not in iAntivirus. So, my bad.

On the other hand, what kind of antivirus does not detect macro viruses? A virus is a virus. And iAV says so in their blog (http://blog.iantivirus.com/2008/01/lets-go-retro-with-macro.html): "...malicious macros are cross-platform threats. They could work and damage both Mac and Windows pc users. Awareness of these threats are very important in protecting our daily computing lives."

An antivirus software that ignores these most common threats can hardly be called an antivirus. And, AKAIK, iAV does not protect you from phishing nor does it scan incoming email. This product is not an antivirus, it's antimalware & should be renamed as such, "iAntiMalware".

For antivirus, I'll stick with ClamAV (or ClamXav). It's free & open source, updated multiple times a day, detects macro viruses & phishing, etc, etc. It may be a little slower (after all its scanning for over 572,235 threats, compared to iAntivirus' 105), but it offers more complete protection. And that's what I need in an antivirus.

But that's not to say iAV is bad, because it's actually very good for detecting walware. Users just need to know what this product does & does not do.

All the best.

[MacAttack]

I was shocked no one responded to this post. Confused, I dug deeper. Well, I can't find what link led me to iAntivirus that claimed iAV detected & cleaned macro viruses, because apparently it doesn't. iAV makes no such claim & other reviews cite that macro detection is not in iAntivirus. So, my bad.

On the other hand, what kind of antivirus does not detect macro viruses? A virus is a virus. And iAV says so in their blog (http://blog.iantivirus.com/2008/01/lets-go-retro-with-macro.html): "...malicious macros are cross-platform threats. They could work and damage both Mac and Windows pc users. Awareness of these threats are very important in protecting our daily computing lives."

An antivirus software that ignores these most common threats can hardly be called an antivirus. And, AKAIK, iAV does not protect you from phishing nor does it scan incoming email. This product is not an antivirus, it's antimalware & should be renamed as such, "iAntiMalware".

For antivirus, I'll stick with ClamAV (or ClamXav). It's free & open source, updated multiple times a day, detects macro viruses & phishing, etc, etc. It may be a little slower (after all its scanning for over 572,235 threats, compared to iAntivirus' 105), but it offers more complete protection. And that's what I need in an antivirus.

But that's not to say iAV is bad, because it's actually very good for detecting walware. Users just need to know what this product does & does not do.

All the best.
Yeah, Clamxav also checks PC viruses. I run it on my PPC Mac, because unfortunately, iAV does not protect PPC Macs.
And I see what you're saying, iAV should protect more. It has a better UI, and faster scanning, but it should protect against malicious macros, as well as fix the issue of using 100% cpu.

They've got a bit more to work on for iAV, but I see a lot of potential. There's just a few things that need to be hammered out.