Hitman Pro 3.5 user review
:first: Hitman Pro 3.5: a very good friend to have
I've read many great things about Hitman Pro over the last year or two and finally got around to trying out verison 3.5 for the past week. I should also note that I'm currently running Avast Internet Security 5.
The installation was quite and fast. One thing that's quite noticeable is the simplicity of it's interface. You could also say, it's a bit idiot-proof. Take a look at the screenshot below:
http://i1194.photobucket.com/albums/...nx/HMPss01.jpg
:huh: There are very few buttons and the Settings are few as well. One thing you might notice is the absence of any "Help" or "About" buttons. If they exist, I couldn't find them.
They reason I was looking for them was because I wanted to know what the difference between "Default scan" and "Quick Scan." I'm still not completely sure except that the contents of "My Documents" directories was scanned as well during a "Default Scan."
There's also the question of what "Early Warning Scoring" is about? When I clicked that, it just seemed to do another "Default Scan." :noidea:
There is also a context menu feature where you can right click on a directory or file and Hitman Pro will scan it. This is a very nice as well as important feature since it provides a way to scan recent downloads. However, I don't believe it will scan the subdirectories under a directory you select for scanning: I had placed a copy of a file an earlier scan had tagged into a subfolder and it was not detected.
But that points to Hitman Pro living up to its description as "Second Opinion Scanner." I had download that file from somewhere almost 6 months ago. Since that time, I had tried out Kaspersky 2010, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and Super Anti-Spyware among other anti-malware products and that file had never been detected. (Note: I have never run it either, thankfully) Hitman Pro is the only app that tagged it as a "Trojan") See screenshot below:
http://i1194.photobucket.com/albums/...nx/HMPss02.jpg
I did a Hash Search on that file at Virus Total and found out only Ikarus and Emsisoft detected it as malware (both of which are employed by Hitman Pro's Cloud scan). Next, since it's a small file, I submitted it to ThreatExpert to see what it does. It produces a rather extensive report, but I did notice one system level dll was deleted and another was modified.
Hmmm... that doesn't sound good does it? So, I then submitted another version of the same app to Threat Expert so I could compare the results. (This version was downloaded directly from a well-respected distributor: Hitman Pro and Virus Total reported it as being clean).
Again, the report was extensive and the deletion and modification of the same two system dlls was seen (both are involved in Visual Basic.) Beyond that point, my level knowledge was insufficient to analyze the differences in the reports, but the important thing is I now know not to run that file!
I should mention that Hitman Pro did detect a couple of files it didn't recognize and tagged as suspicious. It then uploaded them to the cloud for analysis. The next day, they were no longer being reported.
One other thing Hitman Pro is reported to excel at is the removal of malware. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for this review, I didn't get the change to see how well it performs that task. But then, there are plenty of people who have done this sort of testing and said wonderful things about Hitman Pro.
Final words: Hitman Pro is a very good friend to have around. :dance: If nothing else, to do scans of all downloads. It's also worth pointing out that Hitman Pro also does a quick scan at boot.
And I do hope I never need to use it to remove a malware infection. :pray:
Note: unless registered, it will only do malware removal during the trial period and a nag screen -- with an ad -- appears at the end of the scan and report process.
