AVG plugs 'gap' in rival anti-virus products

Security specialist AVG Technologies has launched a free module to be used with rival products to cover threats that they might miss.

The module, Linkscanner, uses real-time web page scanning technology from a company called Exploit Prevention Labs that AVG parent Grisoft bought in late 2007.

Paul Burke, vice-president of product management, said that figures based on data from the company's 85 million users showed that at any given time around two million pages worldwide contain rogue code – and that 60 per cent of these threats are either nullified or moved within 24 hours.

This means the method used by most anti-virus products, blocking pages flagged by a database as compromised pages, will not work in many cases as the information will be out of date because scanning is done only around once in 24 hours, Burke said.

"With Linkscanner we are actually looking at and analysing the incoming stream of web data and identify any threats in it."

The technology is already incorporated into AVG's products, including its highly popular free anti-virus service. Burke would not say what proportion of AVG users use the paid-for service. But he added: "We are very satisfied with our business model."

He said the company was taking a wait-and-see attitude to Microsoft plans to launch a free anti-virus product this year: "Primarily we see it as a validation of our free-to-pay model, which works very well for us."