Limitation of COTS Antiviruses

Abstract

Malware (amalgam between the words malicious and software) aims to access a device without the permission of its owner. Undoubtedly, antiviruses are the most popular mechanism in relation for information security. They are present on 95% of personal computers and are associated with combating malicious applications. Technically, the modus operandi of the COTS antiviruses is for the most part the identification of the executable malicious in their datasets nominated blacklist. The major problem with the strategy, adopted by COTS antiviruses, is that in order to detect a new malware, some machines must have already been infected. In order to demonstrate the inefficiency of COTS antiviruses, the authors evaluate the accuracy of conventional antiviruses. On average, the 86 main worldwide antiviruses were able to detect 54.84%, 34.95%, 42.17%, and 16.82% of Portable Executable (PE), Java, JavaScript, and PHP malwares, respectively. Thus, traditional antiviruses have severe limitations when dealing with cyber-pandemic caused by malware.