I remember a time, many years ago, when SAS was very good at catching more than just adware cookies. I still have SAS running on 5 of my machines, but it hasn't detected anything but cookies in as long as I can remember. I run periodic scans with other AV software (ESET) after running SAS Complete Scans, and ESET will find things and take care of them, fortunately.
This is sad, because SAS used to be the go-to product for difficult to find and remove malware.