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McAfee Releases VirusScan 3.0

New version of popular antivirus package features improved engine and Office 97 support.

By Yardena Arar, PCWorld   

The product and a free 30-day trial copy of the program are available on McAfee%squots Web site.

McAfee officials say VirusScan%squots new Hunter virus detection engine has significantly improved the product%squots ability to identify a wide variety of viruses, including Word and Excel macros, boot sector infectors, file infectors, polymorphic viruses, multi-partite viruses, encrypted viruses, and new ones written in Microsoft Visual Basic. The software can also detect macro viruses in Microsoft Visual Basic 5, the new scripting language used in Office 97.

%dquotWe view VB5 as the emerging platform for macro viruses,%dquot Jimmy Kuo, McAfee%squots director of anti-virus research, said in a statement. %dquotWith just a few simple macro code modifications, virus writers can take a macro virus written for Word documents and alter it to attack Excel spreadsheets.%dquot

Selling for an estimated street price of $45, VirusScan 3.0 includes free electronic software upgrades for a year and free virus signature updates for the life of the product. The virus signature and software updates are delivered automatically, at no additional charge, over the Internet via BackWeb%squots recently announced SecureCast push technology.

A $59 Deluxe version of VirusScan 3.0 includes two years of free software upgrades plus McAfee%squots QuickBackup desktop software and six months of free access to McAfee%squots Internet backup service, the McAfee Personal Vault.