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VBA32 Personal Antivirus: Review and License Giveaway

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Antivirus industry is one of the most competitive one. Hundreds of new and old companies are constantly trying to give their best to stay in the competition. As I have told in my previous articles there are only about 40 companies that develop their original antivirus engines and Virusblock Ada aka VBA32 is one of those. VBA32 is a Belarusian company that started its expedition in May, 1997. Since now this company hasn’t entered exclusively in the markets of US and Asia.

But you may be aware of the name of these products since it is a regular scanner in Virustotal, VirSCAN etc. Also it is well known for its free anti-rootkit product. Although the antivirus product costs around $25, there is a free console scanner for removing infections in computers. I became interested in the product after using their anti-rootkit application and after seeing their moderate detection while scanning malware in Virustotal. I like to test new antivirus and thought to give VBA32 an exposure to our readers.

For home users VirusBlockAda have VBA32 Personal edition. As described in their webpage

You can read the user guide in PDF format. Please note that you might get confused in the names of the home products as they use different notations of this product in different OS. But you can run it on Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista/7 but you have to download different files for different OS. Also it supports both 32 and 64 bit windows of XP, Vista and 7. VBA32 Personal cannot be installed on server as they have a different product that can be installed on servers.

The software is multilingual and presently supports only English, Japanese, French, German, Bulgarian, polish, Belarusian, Latvian, Spanish and Russian languages. VBA32 Personal for 95/98/Me/2000/NT/XP/2003 can be downloaded from here and for Vista/Win7 from here. But for all windows version you can download the multilingual version from here.

I tried the multilingual version from the last link on Windows XP 32 bit.

Installation

Installation went smoothly without much problems. It gives a choice between typical, compact and complete installation.  You will be asked to load VBA32 on startup. I think (not sure though) if you uncheck this option VBA32 can be used as a secondary scanner although it registers in Security/Action center. You will also be asked for a license key file during installation. The demo license that come with the installer will not let you trial the software completely. It will not let you remove infections and even update the application. You can mail sales-en[at]anti-virus.by to get a registration code for the period of 1 month. After completion of installation you will be told to do a restart.

Settings/Performance

At next start-up it will download about 90Mb database files and after its installation it asks for another reboot. Please note that if you do not use the software for a long time say 3-4 weeks you will have to download the complete database again but without a reboot that time.

Antivirus can be updated either online or offline.

Screenshots of tray icons, desktop icons and context menu options can be seen below.

At start-up it scans some essential system files for infections. You will not be shown that scan progress unless you clicked on the tray icon.

You can activate the software either by a key file or by a serial code.

The software settings can be password protected.

Screenshots of VBA32 Loader

Screenshots VBA32 Monitor

Screenshots of VBA32 Scanner. Scanner allows you to restart/stutdown/standby PC after completion of scan.

Screenshots of VBA32 Quarantine

Screenshots of Task Scheduler

Screenshots VBA32 Antidialer

Screenshots of VBA32 Outlook plug-in

Screenshot of VBA32 Script-Filter

Screenshot of VBA32 Mail Filter

VBA32 allows you to send malware files to their server.

On-access detection looks like the following.

As shown in a previous screenshot, there are two entries in the right click menu. The first one allows to scan with default parameters and the second one allows to set scan parameters first and then allows to scan.

Users can get support  directly from tray tool-tip

Overall VBA32 was not heavy on my system. This is mainly because it is not thirsty for CPU but it consumes handy amount of RAM. But with today’s cheaper RAM it shouldn’t be much of a problem. It runs three processes in idle time. While scanning the RAM doesn’t change much but it uses 75% CPU on an average rendering the system less responsive.

In my personal tests, it’s detection against old set of malware is above 90% while its detection against fresh malware is rather poor about 30%. But you don’t have to rely too much on my tests as my test sets are not too much large and random. Also I have no idea if all were genuine malware. It has participated in a few tests and achieved success. So, don’t underestimate them and to add a bit of salt, I want to let you remember that VBA32 was the first antivirus that detected and removed dangerous Stuxnet Worm.

VBA32 updates every 1-2 days depending upon the situation. After submitting files to them, it took about 3 days for them to add detection to database.

VBA32 has its limitations but it has potential too. I hope after successful addition of the new anti-rootkit engine (still in beta) its detection will increase many fold.

Giveaway

Dmitry from VirusBlockAda kindly arranged 25 one year licenses of the antivirus. To grab a license comment below saying which aspect of this antivirus you’ve liked.most. This giveaway will run for a week and will end on 5th March, 2012. Time can be extended if needed.

About the license:

  • Its for 1 PC only but you can use it after formatting your PC and even can move to other PC after uninstalling the existing one!
  • Shelf Life: None, you can activate it any time.
Have a nice time!
Enhanced by ZemantaGiveaway Ended! Winners will be announced soon.
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70 comments

  1. I like how it is able to scan the most popular archive files. I am always downloading in these types of files.

  4. I have tried this program and it is Good. It seemed that buying it from the US was slightly more expensive.

    Low resource usage is a plus.

    JW

  8. I really like the simplicity of this antivirus software. As someone else has mention I also like the fact that it is able to scan multiple file types. Looks like a good solid antivirus in my opinion. Count me in!

  11. Personally I like adjustable “background scan” option, feature not seen often in security products.

    1. I like the fact that there is a representative who frequents Wilders Security forum. This allows closer interaction between the developer and consumer. Serge is great!

  12. despite the spartan and old fashion interface I consider this product reliable and very good for offline virus removals (via boot cd).

  14. This is either very good or very bad. I do not know to say, but they are two ways that are not normally advertised. A completely unknown quantity.
    But frankly, I do not think it does something good. If you’ve tried it, please tell me, too. But not only emotions, but the comparison with some others.

  16. The fact it has plugins for The Bat is especially good.
    Not very many AV’s have this.
    Thanks for the giveaway

  17. Thanks for the opportunity Sujay bro :). It can be use as on-demand scanner. Also it does not impact much on the memory as you per your review so it can be use as a main protection too. So count me in for the giveaway. Best Regards.

  19. Thank you sujay for the VBA AV giveaway.
    I heard lots of pratical features of the VBA AV,hopefully can win 1 license then.
    Please count me in for the contest.

    Thanks & Regards

  20. VBA32 is a very simple but have a ADVANCE SECURITY for Normal user. Good interface and low hardware merriment.

    This is a real good and user friendly.

  21. heard a lot about this antivirus , will love to give it a try 🙂 , please count me in
    regards
    Akhil

  29. I am a Chinese user.I like VBA32 very much! I am very impressed by its simple interface and powerful heuristic analysis. And the product always keeps a low profile, I really like it. I think it is as good as drweb and kaspersky on malware detection and disinfection.However，the development team should reduce its CPU usage and FPS，and add HIPS.Also I hope it can enter into China soon.BTW，I am also attracted to the mystery of Belorussia and VBA32.Briefly, best wishes to the development team and Belorussian.

  30. Thanx for this giveaway and count me in of course.
    The two most important things are:
    speed and low cpu usage
    Regards and good luck to all

  31. Sujay da you are doing a great job by bringing unknown Anti- viruses to the forefront. The interface looks school but guys please remember its was Virus Block Ada which detected Stuxnet for the first time. Please count me in too.

  37. The best features are its regular definition updates
    ,effective quarantine system, heuristic analysis,plugins for the mail clients,script filters,delta patch technology and the facility to send malware related information to its server.
    It occupies less size of hard-disk drive and simple user friendly interface.Please count me in.

  40. Not fancy but more like simple and classic gui, low resources consumption, good cleaning.. great piece of software!

    Count me in please

  46. What I like the most about VBA32 is the clean interface and the configurability it gives to users.
    Thank you for the chance.

  47. I like that VBA32 has a script-filter (very important I think as malicious scripts are are significant vector of infections) and also I’m very intrigued by the Dynamic code translation processor emulator.

  48. The heuristic analysis of VBA32 is very good,and I hope you can select more virus samples from other country to improve its database,in order to improve malware detection to virus of other countrys.And I hope it can be better.

  49. Thank you Sujay for the precise reviews & giveaway of VBA32 Antivirus.
    Would like to have a try of this program.
    Please count me in.

    Thanks.

  51. The script filter is one thing which I liked most. It is not available on most engines. Please count me in.

  55. old,powerful,and simple AV,
    i really like the GUI and
    “Users can get support directly from tray tool-tip”
    this one what i love form VBA32
    i would like to test it since right now i’m not able to buy it

  57. i have read the review i like the features seems easy to use but deadly on detecting worms please count me in

  59. i have read the review i like the features seems easy to use but deadly on detecting worms please count me in

  60. I like theAV is simple, the interface was good, and advanced technologie :p the rootkit detection its soo good
    please count me in

  61. I like the fact that it removed Stuxnet. And I like the fact that it comes from the east…

  63. I like to test this new antivirus !
    In order to compare with what I have now!
    Thanks !!

  65. I like the NOD32 antivirus, as it has little impact on my pc’s performance, I wonder if I’ll take a hit in performance if I use this software??? Only one way to find out, Give me a license and I’ll test it out!!!

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