Loaris Trojan Remover is an advanced program that detects a wide range of malicious software in addition to Trojans. The software has definitions to protect against rouge BHO, ActiveX, Startup programs, Services, Viruses and more. All of these modules combined have over 428,776 signatures. The program also has a very efficient scanner and advanced file analysis tools (heuristics). In fact, the program detected actual malware samples that major competitors failed to detect (all scans are run on the same test system).
The installation of Loaris Trojan Remover was quick. The download size was a modest 16.9 megabytes in size. After the installation completed, the program automatically updated. The program needed to download approximately 15 megabytes in updates as the original download executable seemed to be mildly dated. However, the updates were provided at, at least 300 kilobytes per second making the update relatively painless. After the update completed, the program immediately started a scan.
Loaris Trojan Remover is an on demand scanner and unfortunately doesn’t provide an always on shield. However, for the technical crowd, this program shines. There are four scanning options the full, quick, custom, and standard scans. All scans focus heavily on the registry and core system areas. The scanner is very fast at approximately 10 to 16 megabytes per second. This allowed the standard scan to finish in 17 minutes and 21 seconds (shows the percentage and an accurate time left for the scan). Loaris Trojan Remover detected suspicious items that the standard free antivirus left behind. For example, WinPcap or npf.sys is a driver that sits in between the network interface and the user. While technically a false positive, it shows that the antivirus engine has excellent rootkit detection. If one has a question as to why a virus was detected, simply head over to the log, where the actual suspicious HEX code is displayed (unique to Loaris). The program also detected AiroWizard (a security program but could be classified as malicious) in which a Trojan.SuspectCRC was invoked. Again, this is owed to the program’s accurate heuristic engine. Loaris Trojan Remover did detect some false positives, CloudBerry (amazon aws ICSharpCode.SharpZip.dll) but again could be malicious given the functionality. Finally, the program also detects broken executables which again could be malicious. Therefore, since there are technically some false positives (could easily be malware) the program is designed for the more advanced user. The explore Windows modules is handy in that it auto detects safe active components etc. and displays a corresponding shield next to them. The program detected the nps.sys and a VMware component as suspicious.
In addition to great scanning, there are additional tools. One can reset all settings within internet explorer, reset the host file, reset windows update, and also collect system information about startups. In the settings area, one can enable a deep scan, do a startup scan, ignore many of the false positive detections above such as ignore packers, loaders, incomplete files, risk tools and files greater than 16 megabytes. There is also a full quarantine and the option to look up anything detected via a search engine.
Loaris Trojan Remover’s resource usage is mixed. Since the program only runs when launched, it does not have persistent memory usage. The software can use anywhere from 100 to 180 megabytes when scanning. CPU usage is anywhere from 11 to 16%. However, the interface is very fluid and doesn’t affect other tasks on the test computer.
As far as things that could be improved, I would like to see a real time shield and maybe a scan for novice users that has most of the ignore settings enabled.
