How good are Norton AV heuristics?

Recently I downloaded email from Earthlink that I later found included two messages whose attachments were infected with W32.Beagle.AG@mm. At the time, Earthlink's virus blocker was screening for W32.Beagle.AC@mm, but not for the AG version.

Likewise, my Norton Antivirus software (2004 Professional) did not yet have virus definition updates to cover Beagle.AG. Fortunately, I discovered and eliminated the virus by other means.

This got me to wondering whether Bloodhound heuristics should provide any protection in a situation like this. The manual says that Bloodhound technology "[d]etects new and unknown viruses by analyzing an excutable file's structure, behavior, and other attributes such as programming logic, computer instructions, and any data that is contained in the file. "

I know that this and a couple of dollars may buy me a cup of coffee, but is it useful in detecting viruses in my email?

 

Hello Pekeman,

You might be interested by ESET's NOD32. The heuristic level - from normal to high, can be set by the user.

http://www.nod32.com/home/home.htm ESET web page


http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=16 NOD32 forum at Wilders

Regards - Charles

 

As of July 19, Norton claims to detect BeagleAG
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.beagle.ag@mm.html
And here is what PCMagazine had to say about the heuristic abilities of NAV, NOD and a few other AV apps.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1586106,00.asp