PCRAVC.RVW   950915
 
                               Comparison Review
 
Company and product:
 
Company: Rising Computer Science and Technology Company
Address: Level 3, North Block, Yi Bin Fan Dian, Hai Dian District, Beijing
         100080, P. R. China
Phone:   256-7073
Fax:     256-4934
Contact: Alex Lau
Email:   alau@sirius.com
Product: Rising Anti-Virus Card (RAVC)
 
 
Summary: hardware based activity monitor for Intel/BIOS/ISA computers
 
 
Cost: unknown
 
Rating (1-4, 1 = poor, 4 = very good)
      "Friendliness"
            Installation      2
            Ease of use       2
            Help systems      1
      Compatibility           3
      Company
            Stability         2
            Support           1
      Documentation           1
      Hardware required       4
      Performance             2
      Availability            1
      Local Support           1
 
General Description:
 
Small form factor ISA card with ROM extensions for activity monitoring and
write protection.
 
 
                  Comparison of features and specifications
 
 
User Friendliness
 
Installation
 
The package, as I received it, had the card, a 1.44M writable but protected
disk and no instructions.  Installation should apparently be a simple matter of
installing the card.  None of the four programs on the disk appear to be
necessary either to installation or to operation.
 
There are four dip switches on the card.  The MEMTEST program seems to have
provision for determining what the positions of the switches should be, but in
my installation it did not give any clear statement, and the positioning which
seemed to be indicated was not correct.
 
On first installation, the card produced a ROM checksum error and denied access
to the hard disk.  After a number of installation attempts, the card allowed
the system to boot normally.
 
Ease of use
 
When a suspect activity is detected, the user is presented with a box onscreen 
In some cases this is a clear direction, such as to reboot the computer from a
clean disk; an informational message, such as notice that a suspect program has
been removed from memory; or a rather terse menu of choices to reboot, "Yes"
(allow the suspect operation) or abort (the program currently running).
 
Help systems
 
None provided.
 
Compatibility
 
The program did not produce overt conflicts with programs.  Utilities
performing disk writes to system areas and modification of programs will
generate alerts and may be terminated.  Testing with a limited set of viral
programs did not uncover any obvious weaknesses in the package.  The RAVC was
not tested with Windows, but does not appear to have provisions for it.  (With
other similar packages the alert screen does not appear but the alert beep can
be heard.)
 
Company Stability
 
Unknown, but said to be a major vendor in China.
 
Company Support
 
None provided.
 
Documentation
 
None provided.  This makes determination of other factors difficult.
 
System Requirements
 
Stated to be DOS 2.0 or higher.  The card will work with any 8 or 16-bit ISA or
EISA slot.
 
Performance
 
The activity monitor appears to check for modification of .COM and .EXE files,
but not .BAT or .SYS.  Boot sector infectors are prevented from infecting the
hard disk.  In the case of a boot sector infector, the user is requested to
boot from a clean system disk, but this does not appear to be necessary. 
Attempts to write or copy to .COM files produced irregular alerts, but I was
never able to get a virus to successfully infect.  System infectors which do
not directly write to executable files were also unsuccessful.  Companion viral
programs were not tested but the creation of new executable files usually
prompted an alert.
 
Copying or updating of software files is subject to numerous alerts and the
RAVC would likely be unsuitable for development environments.  It should
probably be removed during software upgrades.
 
Programs provided for the setting and clearing of passwords, and a network
program, have no discernable effect on operation.
 
Local Support
 
None provided.
 
Support Requirements
 
If there are no problems with installation, this could be used unsupported in
an environment where programs are not changed.
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1995   PCRAVC.RVW   950915

======================
roberts@decus.ca     rslade@vanisl.decus.ca     aa046@freenet.victoria.bc.ca
      If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate
Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94311-0/3-540-94311-0