ESET NOD32 Antivirus 17.0.12.0 Crack [2023]

The main window includes plenty of whitespace, along with a picture of ESET’s blue-eyed cyborg mascot. To launch a scan or an update, you can use either the left-side menu or a pair of large blue panels near the bottom of the window. If there’s a configuration problem, the green security banner changes color. If NOD32 needs your attention—to show the results of a completed scan, for example—you see the number of notifications next to the corresponding menu item.

Mostly Good Lab Results

Three of the four independent testing labs I follow include NOD32 in their testing, and its scores are mostly excellent. Tests by London-based MRG-Effitas are especially grueling. Out of a dozen products tested, only ESET, Bitdefender, and Norton pass both this lab’s tests in the latest round.

Experts at AV-Test Institute examine antivirus products for three important criteria. Protection is important, naturally, but so is a low impact on performance. Wrongly flagging valid programs as malicious is detrimental to a program’s usability. Antivirus tools can earn up to six points each for Protection, Performance, and Usability, for a maximum score of 18. Any antivirus that earns at least 17.5 points is named a Top Product. More than half the products in this lab’s latest test earn a perfect 18 points. Another quarter of the products, ESET among them, take 17.5 points.

At AV-Comparatives, testers don’t assign numeric scores. A product that passes any test receives Standard certification, while those that go beyond the minimum passing score can take Advanced or Advanced+ certification. In the three tests from this lab that I follow, NOD32 takes one Standard, one Advanced, and one Advanced+ rating. Bitdefender is the only product with Advanced+ in all three.

Unusual Scan Choices

I timed a full scan of my standard clean test system and found that NOD32 finished in just under half an hour. That’s quite a bit better than the current average of 66 minutes. During that initial scan, NOD32 also optimizes for subsequent scanning, marking known good programs that don’t require another look. A second scan finished in just four minutes.

NOD32 doesn’t offer the quick scan option found in many antivirus products, but it gives you several custom scanning choices. You can drop suspect files or folders on the scan page for a quick checkup. It offers to scan each removable drive you mount. From the custom scan menu you can scan memory, boot sectors, or any local or network drive.

The boot sector scan I mentioned also triggers NOD32’s UEFI scanner. UEFI (which stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is what modern computers use instead of the antique BIOS. The UEFI scanner also runs in the background, making sure no malware has subverted your firmware. I have to assume it works, but I have no way to trigger its protection for testing purposes. Firmware protection is important. Any malware that weaseled into the firmware would have total control over your computer. One aim of the stringent security requirements for running Windows 11 is to protect the firmware and the entire boot process.

I’m always happy to have results reported by the independent labs, but not every product makes it into those reports. Even when results are available, I still run hands-on malware protection testing, to see the product’s defenses in action.

When I opened the folder containing my current collection of malware samples, NOD32’s real-time protection gave them the once-over. However, it only eliminated 32% of them at this point. That’s uncommonly low—most products score in the 80s or better. Adaware Antivirus Free impressively eliminated 90% of this same sample collection on sight, though it came up short in other areas.

Notably, NOD32 recognized less than half of the ransomware samples on sight. Of a dozen other products whose real-time protection wipes out known threats on sight, eight eliminated all the ransomware samples on sight and four eliminated all but one.

Continuing the test, I launched the remaining samples. Clearly the antivirus applies a tougher standard to programs that are about to launch. It prevented quite a few samples from launching at all. That included all the remaining ransomware samples, most of which it identified by name. It did flag some samples as PUAs, and I chose to delete all of those. In other cases, it caught a malware component during the installation process.

NOD32 detected 89% of the samples one way or another. However, the fact that it let several samples install executable files brought its overall score down to a dismal 7.9 points, even worse than the 8.3 points it scored in my previous review. Tested with this same sample set, Malwarebytes managed 100% detection and a perfect 10 points. McAfee came close, with 100% detection and 9.9 points. And Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus detected 99% and scored 9.8.

NOD32’s score in this test is the lowest of any product tested with the current sample set. That result doesn’t line up at all with its many excellent lab test scores. When my results don’t jibe with the labs, I give the labs more weight.

It takes me quite a while to collect and analyze a new set of malware samples, so those necessarily stay the same for months. To check a product’s protection against the latest in-the-wild threats, I start with a feed of malware-hosting URLs detected in the last few days by researchers at MRG-Effitas. I launch each URL in turn and note whether the antivirus prevents access to the URL, eliminates the malware payload, or utterly fails to detect any threat.

Prices start from a reasonable $50 for a single device, one-year license, and rise to a more costly $180 ($270 on renewal) outlay to cover five devices over three years. That’s similar to other big-name vendors. Bitdefender Internet Security covers a single device for only $25 in year one, for instance, but it’s $60 on renewal; a five-device, three-year Kaspersky Internet Security license is $135 initially, $270 on renewal.

ESET Smart Security Premium extends the suite a little more with a password manager and encryption for your files and folders. It also gets you a new LiveGuard feature which Webroot says can ‘proactively discover and stop never-before-seen types of threat.’ (Sounds great, though we expected the lesser packages to do that.)

The package starts at only a marginally more expensive $60 for a one-year subscription, and a five device, three-year license costs $220 for the first term, $330 on renewal.

Once again, there are much better deals around. For example, Bitdefender Total Security’s ten-device, three-year license is $161 in term one, $230 on renewal.