as far as i know there are countless number of viruses which attack specific anti-vir programs
…norton has been the most affected…and then again there as rootkits which hide their presence and open ur system all kinds of attacks including disabling anti-vir,stealing private data,opining ports which give the hacker unlimited access to ur system…
and some malwares are even know to delete *.exe files of anti-vir programes…
and ur second question on wat to do IF ur anti-vir is attacked by a vir…
first u need to come up with a specific problem and post it on this forum…
we’ll gladly look into it…and most of such problems can be solved with in a few days at the most which such active antivirus forums coming up…and the countless number of updates it should not be a problem.
and don’t worry about asking too many questions .or being a newbie…i found avast forum to be a pretty warm place for a newbie…especially since its run by a bunch of above 16 yr olds ;D
The general means of attack is to disable the AV, if that happens you should see a Red circle with a bar over the top of the avast ‘a’ icon. The windows Security Center would also likely report it isn’t running.
The avast icon also rotates when it is working scanning files if that stops happening it would be an indication that something isn’t right so you would need to investigate.
Check the Task Manager Processes and see what avast processes are running, they begin with ash or asw, see image, these are the common processes you would normally see in task manager (depending in what providers you are running).