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The Virus Bulletin test (VB100), an independent test that stresses operating systems and anti-virus suites to see how robust they are, was recently pitted against Vista. This time around, Vista was put to the test against various malware packages to see how the OS stood up to become compromised by rogue software. The result didn't look too good for Vista though the test is more about the security suites than the OS security itself.

Many of the 37 suites tested failed the challenge, falling well short of a 100% hit rate. Some were just terrible, such as “Coverage PC Live”, which missed more than 15% of the malware packages thrown at it. More well-known names, like Trend Micro and McAfee, scored closer to getting everything cleaned up – but didn't quite make it. Most interestingly, and in Microsoft's favor, Windows Live OneCare managed to be one of those suites that stopped every single malware threat thrown at it. All things being equal, the tests were not that different from the ones put against XP.