I conducted a comprehensive cybersecurity research project evaluating modern antivirus software against various malware threats in a controlled virtual environment. Using Oracle VirtualBox, I tested six commercial antivirus solutions (Norton 360, McAfee, Malwarebytes, Avast, TotalAV, and others) against five different malware samples including ransomware variants, applet killers, and shell script executors. I sourced the malware samples from the vx-underground repository and enhanced them with improved error handling, resource management, and evasion techniques to create more realistic threats.

My testing revealed significant detection gaps across all antivirus platforms, with most failing to identify malware during both real-time protection and full system scans. Only Norton 360 demonstrated effective automatic threat removal, while TotalAV blocked one malicious download. I found that individual file scanning occasionally succeeded where comprehensive scans failed, suggesting resource allocation issues in detection algorithms. I utilized a sandboxed network environment with REMnux for traffic analysis, ensuring ethical testing practices while highlighting the ongoing challenges antivirus software face against evolving malware threats.