Avast! and UseNext 3.45

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi I’m using Avast 4.6 home edition alongside UseNext 3.45 (www.usenext.com).

UseNext is a USENET downloading tool, however whenever Avast! is active the usenext program refuses to connect to the NNTP server.

Below is a copy and paste of the email back from Usenext about this, it doesn’t make any sense to me as I cannot find the related menu options, can anyone help?

In the settings of Avast under the menu dot “customize/ Basic” you can choose a HTTP Port, simply type in “80,119” and the access to the news server should be possible with the UseNeXT-Software. If this will not fix your problem, please contact the Avast support.

–
Gavin

2

What operating system do you use?
Do you use any firewall?

3

Windows XP Pro SP2 with Windows Firewall

The USENEXT application runs fine when Avast OnAccess protection is turned off.

4

Does it help if you uncheck the options “Scan inbound news” and “Scan outbound news” on the NNTP configuration page of Internet Mail provider?

5

Thats now allowing the program to run,

However, it would be nice to have protection from Avast! when articles are being read/binaries being downloaded.

Any ideas, maybe the port settings? as I think the client uses 80 (WWW) too.

Gavin

6

Please send me scanner log file as described here:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=12234.msg103474#msg103474

7

According to the log, the server didn’t respond as a NNTP server should. They are probably using a modified protocol to prevent unsubscribed people from using their servers and avast scanner cannot understand that communication.

8

It is subscription based so I would imagine that some form of security/authorisation is in place.

Can any modifications be made to the scanner to accept the replies and then continue providing protection?

Gavin

9

Did you send the log file for analysis?

10

I’m a UseNeXT developer and just found this discussion on Google. In the UseNeXT newsreader we included a search function which communicates on port 119 buf uses a binary RPC protocol instead of NNTP to receive the search results. Avast! most likely discovers that the protocol being used is not valid NNTP and so blocks the connection. Please reply if there is anything we can change to avoid this.
Port 119 seemed a good choice because it already needs to be unblocked on firewall for the NNTP downloads. Most likely we will have to find another solution for the RPC protocol in the near future (for example HTTP tunneling or port 443).

xdarwin

11

Yes the log has been sent in to yourselves.

Gavin

12

Gavin, themselves, I’m an user like you 8)
Hope Vojtech has something to tell us…

13

Xdarwin, can’t you add the UseNeXT process to the Ignore list of the avast! Mail Scanner?
Can’t you manage an address:port pair to the ignore addresses of it?

14

Well, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea if the usenext setup should try to change other applications (Avast!) internal configuration. We will see if we can’t come up with better solution (use a port different than 119) to make UseNeXT compatible with Avast.

15

This work around doesn’t involve UseNeXT setup modifying avast’s configuration, rather the user editing the avast ini file them selves to ignore UseNeXT, not UseNeXT telling avast to ignore it. I think we all know the implications of that.

I ignore one program in this way, mailwasher, not because it doesn’t conform to standards/protocol for the ports it uses, just I don’t want the email scanner to scan the partial content of the mailwasher download.

16

So current workaround is either to disable NNTP scanning or to set avast to ignore UseNeXT.exe’s connections. But avast news scanner cannot scan UseNeXT’s downloads until there is only NNTP on port 119.

If there is a possibility to set an external scanner for downloaded files in UseNeXT client, people can use avast’s ashQuick.exe.