ESET HOME Security Essential delivers not only outstanding protection of digital life, but also is recognized as the perfect blend of simplicity, advanced customization for tech-savvy users, and low impact on device performance. 

What makes software perfect? Be it an email service, a video editor, a shopping app, or even a video game… First and foremost, it should be outstanding in doing what it is designed to do, right? That’s true, but not the whole story.

On 20 February, ESET was honored with AV-Comparatives’ Product of the Year 2024 Award for ESET HOME Security Essential at AV-Comparatives’ Awards Ceremony. This award is a result of more than 30 years of ESET experience and its efforts to deliver the best cyber protection for home users.

What makes the AV-Comparatives award particularly intriguing is the reviewers’ broad focus on multiple aspects of the assessed cybersecurity solutions. Leaving no stone unturned, they checked anti-malware capabilities, performance, overall user experience, and support across a series of tests in 2024.

Let’s take a look at how ESET HOME Security protects users against both laboratory and real-life scenarios, how it affects the protected device, and why it is so user-friendly.

ESET HOME Security Essential excelled across several protection tests, including AV-Comparatives’ Real-World Protection Test, Malware Protection Test, and Advanced Threat Protection Test. What does this mean for users? It proves that ESET can protect them from hundreds of thousands of threats trying to compromise their devices from a variety of entry points.

See for yourself:

Real-World Protection Test – This test aims to simulate real-world conditions users experience every day while browsing the Internet. Antivirus products are tested against hundreds of malicious URLs. Testers also note any required human interactions, i.e. blocking/allowing detected samples to execute.

Malware Protection Test – While in the Real-World Protection Test the gateway to a tested device is the web, in the Malware Protection Test the vectors can be, for example, network drives or USBs – or they cover scenarios in which the malware is already on the disk.

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Test – Also known as the Enhanced Real-World Test, this examination uses penetration techniques that allow attackers to target specific external computer systems, and it evaluates how well security products protect against such attacks. This test also evaluates protection against targeted advanced threats such as exploits and fileless attacks.

The Advanced Threat Protection Test also acknowledges the ESET prevention-first approach, where our technology is configured to stop attacks before they happen. To that end, half of the blocked malware samples (7 of 15) were stopped in their pre-execution phase, i.e. before the threat had run and was still inactive on the system.

This protection is not theoretical. ESET detection engines have discovered and stopped many advanced threats such as Lumma Stealer. Sold on the dark web, this infostealer malware mostly targets cryptocurrency wallets, user credentials, and two-factor authentication browser extensions. It also tries to exfiltrate other data from compromised machines and can spread in multiple ways, including cracked installations of popular open-source and paid apps such as ChatGPT or Vegas Pro.

The real magic behind this “product of the year” is not only making it effective, but ensuring those capabilities don’t significantly slow down the protected device or overwhelm users with false alarms.

Creating security capable of catching malware at every step of its deployment process is one thing (and there can be hundreds of those steps), but it takes a number of real experts to finetune it to effectively block malware without impacting the processes of legitimate software or triggering false alarms. To ensure that the products tested didn’t suffer from these issues, AV-Comparatives’ reviewers also checked for false positives while  products are in their default settings. “False positives can cause as much trouble as a real infection” reads the AV-Comparatives summary report.

ESET HOME Security Essential won the silver medal in the False Positives category as testers detected altogether only 15 false positives during all tests run in 2024. To compare, some other tested solutions produced around 30 false positives in a single test.

On top of that, ESET was also awarded for low system-impact while testers performed usual user procedures such as file copying, installing applications, or browsing websites.

Read the full AV-Comparatives’ Summary Report 2024.

When considering what the best software should look like, the critical part is user experience. And what did AV-Comparatives have to say about ESET HOME Security Essential?

“Reviewers were impressed by the clean, intuitive user interface designed for non-expert users, as well as extensive customization and scan options available for power users.”

They describe ESET HOME Security Essential as a well-designed and easy-to-use security product providing safe default settings and a clean, intuitive interface for non-expert users, where essential features like “help” and access-control are easily accessible. For power users, the settings dialog has plenty of advanced options, including excellent access-control.

In this way, ESET HOME Security Essential can perfectly serve both average Joes and tech-savvy home admins.

Learn more about ESET HOME Security solutions here.

So, what makes a software perfect? Perfect software seamlessly combines functionality, usability, and reliability. It addresses user needs effectively, providing intuitive and user-friendly interfaces that enhance the overall experience.

Having a cyber security solution with all these attributes is especially important when we are talking about protecting your data, identity, and finances. ESET HOME Security Essential is all-in-one protection for your digital life, and ESET is proud to say that it has triumphed as AV-Comparatives´ 2024 Product of the Year.

• DeceptiveDevelopment targets freelance software developers through spearphishing on job-hunting and freelancing sites, aiming to steal cryptocurrency wallets and login information from browsers and password managers.
• This operation primarily uses two malware families – BeaverTail (infostealer, downloader) and InvisibleFerret (infostealer, Remote Access Trojan – RAT).
• DeceptiveDevelopment’s techniques are similar to several other known North Korea-aligned operations.

PRAGUE, BRATISLAVA — February 20, 2025 — Since 2024, ESET researchers have observed a series of malicious North Korea-aligned activities, where the operators, posing as software development  recruiters, entice the victims with fake employment offers. Subsequently, they try to serve their targets with software projects that conceal infostealing malware. ESET Research calls this activity cluster DeceptiveDevelopment. This North Korea-aligned activity is currently not attributed by ESET to any known threat actor. It targets freelance software developers through spearphishing on job-hunting and freelancing sites, aiming to steal cryptocurrency wallets and login information from browsers and password managers.

“As part of a fake job interview process, the DeceptiveDevelopment operators ask their targets to take a coding test, such as adding a feature to an existing project, with the files necessary for the task usually hosted on private repositories on GitHub or other similar platforms. Unfortunately for the eager work candidate, these files are trojanized: Once they download and execute the project, the victim’s computer gets compromised,” explains ESET researcher Matěj Havránek, who made the discovery and analyzed DeceptiveDevelopment.

DeceptiveDevelopment’s tactics, techniques, and procedures are similar to several other known North Korea-aligned operations. Operators behind DeceptiveDevelopment target software developers on Windows, Linux, and macOS. They steal cryptocurrency primarily for financial gain, with a possible secondary objective of cyberespionage. To approach their targets, these operators use fake recruiter profiles on social media. The attackers don’t distinguish based on geographical location, instead aiming to compromise as many victims as possible to increase the likelihood of successfully extracting funds and information.

DeceptiveDevelopment primarily uses two malware families as part of its activities, delivered in two stages. In the first stage, BeaverTail (infostealer, downloader) acts as a simple login stealer, extracting browser databases containing saved logins, and as a downloader for the second stage, InvisibleFerret (infostealer, RAT), which includes spyware and backdoor components, and is also capable of downloading the legitimate AnyDesk remote management and monitoring software for post-compromise activities.

In order to pose as recruiters, the attackers copy profiles of existing people or even construct new personas. They then either directly approach their potential victims on job-hunting and freelancing platforms, or post fake job listings there. While some of these profiles are set up by the attackers themselves, others are potentially compromised profiles of real people on the platform, modified by the attackers.

Some of the platforms where these interactions occur are generic job-hunting ones, while others focus primarily on cryptocurrency and blockchain projects and are thus more in line with the attackers’ goals. The platforms include LinkedIn, Upwork, Freelancer.com, We Work Remotely, Moonlight, and Crypto Jobs List.

Victims receive the project files either directly via file transfer on the site, or through a link to a repository like GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. They are asked to download the files, add features or fix bugs, and report back to the recruiter. Additionally, they are instructed to build and execute the project in order to test it, which is where the initial compromise happens. The attackers often use a clever trick to hide their malicious code: They place it in an otherwise benign component of the project, usually within backend code unrelated to the task given to the developer, where they append it as a single line behind a long comment. This way, it is moved off-screen and stays mostly hidden.

“The DeceptiveDevelopment cluster is an addition to an already large collection of money-making schemes employed by North Korea-aligned actors and conforms to an ongoing trend of shifting focus from traditional money to cryptocurrencies,” concludes Havránek.

For a more detailed analysis and technical breakdown of DeceptiveDevelopment, check out the latest ESET Research blogpost, “DeceptiveDevelopment targets freelance developers,” on WeLiveSecurity.com. Make sure to follow ESET Research on Twitter (today known as X) for the latest news from ESET Research.

Heatmap of different victims of DeceptiveDevelopment

全球網絡安全解決方案領導品牌 ESET 宣布，其 ESET HOME Security Essential 榮膺 AV-Comparatives 「2024 年度產品大獎」。這項備受推崇的獎項，表彰了 ESET HOME Security Essential 在 Windows 平台上的卓越效能與可靠性，致力於保護消費者免受多元網絡威脅的侵害。

2024 年，AV-Comparatives 對 16 款 Windows 消費級安全產品進行了嚴苛評測，檢驗它們在抵禦真實網絡威脅、識別最新惡意軟件、防禦進階針對性攻擊，以及在不影響電腦運作速度的前提下提供保護的能力。ESET HOME Security Essential 以出色的表現脫穎而出，在全年七項測試中均榮獲最高等級的 Advanced+ 獎項，穩坐最佳產品寶座。

AV-Comparatives 2024 年總結報告指出：「評審團對其簡潔直觀、專為非專業用戶設計的介面讚譽有加，同時也肯定其為進階用戶提供的豐富自訂功能與掃描選項，令人印象深刻。」

儘管多數供應商將自動續訂設為強制條件，報告特別讚揚 ESET 是少數不強迫用戶接受自動續訂的廠商，令人稱道。報告進一步強調，ESET HOME Security Essential 是一款設計精良且操作友善的安全產品，提供安全的預設設定，並確保所有用戶都能輕鬆掌握其核心功能。

AV-Comparatives 創辦人暨行政總裁 Andreas Clementi 評論說：「ESET 在 2024 年測試中展現了一貫的優異表現，在多項評比中均獲得高分肯定。這項殊榮充分體現產品在惡意軟件防護、易用性與系統效能上的可靠性。ESET HOME Security Essential 以平衡的設計，提供高效保護同時不拖累系統效能，這無疑是許多用戶所期待的優勢。」

ESET 消費者與物聯網部門副總裁 Viktória Ivanová 表示：「能獲 AV-Comparatives 評選為 2024 年度產品，我們深感榮幸。」