Time for an update! To keep up with the latest threats, and solve some issues and feature requests users had, we're proud to announce Spybot-S&D version 1.6. Some of the features include:

Improved Scan Speed

Reported a few weeks ago as one of the big issues users face, Spybot-S&D 1.6 integrates parts of the future 2.0 file scanning engine to speed up the on-demand scan.

Up-to-date browser support

Both immunization and the on-demand scan are able to access a dozen different browsers, which now include the latest revisions of the most popular ones, Firefox and Opera.

Easier On-Access Use

Until now, our on-access part was able to block bad entries, but at the same time, confused many novice users by asking for confirmation on changes of other monitored system entries as well. While this is a great feature for all experienced users who want full control over their systems, we decided that we need to make this easier for the average user, and integrated automated decisions based on the system entry database built through our RunAlyzer, containing more than quarter of a million decisions.

OpenSBI

Safer Networking also announces OpenSBI, our attempt at opening up the fight against malware to anyone who wants to participate. OpenSBI means we've published documentation and tools that anyone can use to create their own malware detection patterns for use with Spybot-S&D, and share those with other Spybot-S&D users.

• Diversity - everyone can create detection templates for any software, without depending on a central authority to acknowledge its threat.
• Neutrality - we cannot be bought to remove detections from our database, but if you do not believe us, you can simply publish your own rules against some malware.
• Continuity - OpenSBI ensures that you'll get updates as long as someone is interested in updating the database (which does not mean we intend to do less work in adding new detections).
• Flexibility - as a system administrator using the network edition, you can make sure that working time is not wasted by employees playing the latest Moorhuhn clone if you add your own detection for it. Keep in mind that some relaxation is said to even improve work results.

And quite a lot more bug fixes and new features, which can be found on bug tracker.

Malware is growing to become more and more randomized, and one of the consequences of this is a growing risk of false positives in any anti-malware product. Just testing on more and more laboratory machines never covers the whole live situation out there though, so we thought about a different, more community-like, approach: we've decided to implement a distributed computing concept to back up our internal testing.

You may know existing distributed computing projects: Seti@home for example uses the power of a huge community to look for extra-terrestrial live, Folding@home uses a huge community as well to possibly find more understanding about diseases like cancer. Spybot-S&D Distributed Testing (SDDT) isn't helping you to make phone calls to Alpha Centauri, nor does it cure diseases, but then, it's also not really taking that much processing time away as if you would use them. It uses the same community power though: the results of the scans of many real live machines, maybe including yours, will help us make safer and even faster updates available!

This project has been available as a beta for half a year, and now we're looking for more participants. Don't be afraid of it slowing down your system - it's not working continuously as the aforementioned clients are, it operates in a user-defined interval, and then only scans small databases, taking a few seconds usually. You can also have it submit your scans anonymously, or, if you want to use the new feature to view any of your previous scan results in your User Control Panel on our forums, provide an email address.

If you want to help, feel free to head over to the forum and download the client. Also, expect more announcements regarding the quantity of detections as well next week...

Eight years ago, Spybot-S&D originally started off as a very fast anti-spyware scanner, detecting some 30 small things, and you could watch it finish in under a minute.

Today, a full scan applies more than 600,000 tests, and you can watch that number grow weekly on our update list. Handling such numbers obviously is quite a bit different, and while we've tried to adjust to that with each version, a full scan might still take half an hour currently. Since this was one big major complaint issue, we decided to integrate parts of the new file scanner designed for a future 2.0 release and optimized for modern malware fighting, and got you a major push in speed now - that same scan will now take five to six minutes only, being about five times as fast as 1.5 was!

If you want to enjoy that speed and know a bit about beta testing, head over to our beta forums and get the first beta! If you prefer to wait for a thoroughly tested public release, we hope to get around to that quite soon.

Oh, and one more thing... there's more up for 1.6: a second big issue we hear often will be addressed, so stay tuned!