I got to know Hitman Pro last year but didn’t post it out because I find it a little ridiculous to install it on a computer. Imagine that it installs ESET NOD32, Webroot Spy Sweeper, PC Tools Spyware Doctor, McAfee VirusScan, Ad-Aware, Spybot, TrendMicro CWShredder, Ewido Microscanner and SpywareBlaster to your computer then it updates and scans. Normally a computer that has been infected by malware would be running very slowly, installing all the software would definitely make it even slower. Moreover we haven’t even taken a look at the time needed to download the latest definition and also running a full scan…

The latest version of Hitman Pro 3 has changed and uses scan cloud. First Hitman Pro 3 will try to detect virus and files that have a suspicious behavior. Then it uploads to Hitman’s server to have it scanned with 5 antivirus engines that always scores very high in virus detection (GData, NOD32, Avira, PrevX and A-Squared). If the uploaded files are being detected as malicious, it will be removed.

Hitman Pro 3.5 review

I wanted check out Hitman Pro 3 myself because I read quite a lot of good comments on it from Wilders Security forum.

Good thing about Cloud Computing technology is you do not need a virus scanner installed on your computer as the scanning is done on the server itself. So you can expect a very low system load. The bad thing is it requires a working Internet connection and the behavior analysis has to be very good or else it can’t detect a malicious files and won’t upload it to the clouds for scanning.

I dropped a total of 22 malicious files (virus and trojan) on my test computer and ran a scan. Hitman Pro 3 took only 40 seconds to complete scanning. It detected 21 files as dangerous and uploaded to the clouds to scan with multiple antivirus engines. I was surprised that Hitman Pro missed one old VBS worm. I uploaded the VBS worm in VirusTotal and all 5 antivirus engines used by Hitman Pro was able to detect it as a threat. This shows that Hitman Pro has problems identifying threats in .vbs extension… Hopefully they’ll fix it in future versions. Before Hitman Pro can remove the malicious files, I must activate the program first. Since this is my first time testing Hitman Pro 3, I can activate a one-time free license valid for 30 days. When finished removing the virus, closing the program totally terminates it and doesn’t leave any hidden process at background.

Now I wanted to test if Hitman is able to remove a trojan that is infected on my computer. I infect my test computer with Bifrost trojan and then ran a scan. Sadly Hitman Pro shows ZERO identified traces meaning it failed detect the Bifrost trojan that is infected on my PC.
hitman fails bifrost

When I right click on the Bifrost trojan and select “Scan with Hitman Pro”, Hitman was able to detect is as a trojan and advice me to delete it.
hitman detects bifrost

Then I tried infecting my computer with Brontok and Sality virus, then run a full scan with Hitman to see if it can detect and remove the virus from my computer. Hitman immediately shows up a Runtime Error with the message “R6002 – floating point support not loaded” after clicking the Next button.

Hitman Pro 3 cost $19.95 for 1 PC valid for a year. Honestly I wouldn’t mind using Hitman Pro 3 as an alternative IF it is free but since it cost money, I can settle VirusTotal Uploader 2.0 which scans a suspicious file in cloud with 41 types of antivirus. Hitman Pro is NOT an antivirus and it is not made to protect your computer real time from viruses. It is more like a tool for you to scan suspicious file with 5 different antivirus engine based on its behavioral scan.

I also find that the Hitman Pro 3 licensing system is not very strong. Although there are not many cracks or no keygen for Hitman Pro 3 because of the online activation, but defeating the trial period is way too easy. When you activate the 30 day free license, two files will be created (HitmanPro.lic and HitmanPro.key) saved in application data folder. If you try to delete the 2 files, Hitman Pro license will be deactivated which lets you think that you can do this whenever the 30 days trial period is up. However, after 30 days you can no longer re-activate the free license and you will always get the error “Your free trial period for Hitman Pro is expired”. I found out that when you activate the one time free license, Hitman Pro’s server records your computer’s Security Identifier (SID). Every computer has a unique SID and the only way to change it is to reinstall Windows or you can simply look for some tools such as NewSID or GhostWalker to change them.

[ Visit Hitman Pro 3 Website ]

[tags]review, hitman, antimalware, security, antvirus[/tags]