Any comment, please?
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/forums/index.cfm?action=showthread&threadid=296952&forumid=1
Yes, they would have been better to have come to this forum where they would have I believe received better help.
There are a number of malware items that target anti-viruses as avast is getting more popular it to is getting targeted. and for the most part these attacks are hidden by rootkits on the system, there is a variant of beagle that attacks avast amongst others. This may well be the same malware but under a different name (no standardisation in malware names).
See http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=26554.0,
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=25941.0 the most effestive to date in finding and dealing with the rootkit element has been:
http://research.pandasoftware.com/blogs/research/archive/2006/12/14/Rootkit-cleaner.aspx
http://www.f-secure.com/blacklight/try_blacklight.html
Now one of the reason I said they would have been better coming here is we would also recommend if they had isolated or detected the cause would be to submit the sample to avast for analysis.
Unfortunately there is so little information on that link to adequately comment.
Many thanks, DavidR. This information will take me some time to assimilate, so I had better get on with it. Thanks again.
No problem, welcome to the forums.
So are you reporting that you have that problem or enquiring out of interest ?
Apologies for the delay.
Mainly out of interest. Ive been using avast! Home for more than a year now and in that time it has never let me down, so I was a bit surprised to see a user saying that something had disabled it and wanted some expert info. as to how this could have happened just in case something similar turned up in my system. I read about this "rootkit" problem some time ago in a computer mag. but I regret to say I failed to take sufficient notice of it, and now I cant find the damn thing!
I see the original poster ( in PC Advisor) has reformatted in order to clean his system but that seems a bit drastic to me and, as you say, he would have been better to have come here to find an answer.
Thank you for the info. and for the welcome to this forum.
Reformatting certainly is a drastic measure, sometimes a necessary measure as the infection and the possible more damage done trying to remove it without expert help. I certainly wouldn’t have suggested that route, there are many options and tools to use before pressing the nuclear button.
I feel they would certainly been better off on the avast support forums, where we at least know a little about avast ;D
Those kind of malwares are a living proof that avast needs to have a self protection. Something like the the beta code that was given before by Vlk. This threat is by far the only one that disables Avast so I wish that Avast introduce an update to harden its security before the new Avast 5 comes out. Unless of course Avast is going to release it shortly (and that would be even better).
Al968
I second this… I can’t understand why they’re ‘keeping’ the updated code for the avast 5 version… if it’s ready (the antikill feature) why can’t it be on avast 4.8 or whatever is the number they want to give to new avast version.
I would second the second, what surprised me was the the anti-kill beta code was released but no further update was done of the first beta code despite there being some big updates along the way to 4.7.1029
I wonder if Vlk still feels the same
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=21098.msg176818#msg176818
Personally I don’t see the anti-kill as a big new feature but essential protection, which when users are experiencing avast being killed, in the wild so to speak.
This should be brought in at the earliest opportunity and not wait, they wouldn’t wait to bring in a new signature to combat a an in the wild virus. The fact that avast signatures are totally missing this avast killer trojan something else has to be considered to protect avast users and that would be anti-kill.
It should be treated no differently to an in the wild virus, treated with the utmost urgency and a fix introduced as soon as possible rather than wait for an artificial deadline. But in order to do that it would have to have the beta test done as the previous anti-kill beta code fizzled out it was never updated.
Fully agree.
Also Agree.
However I’d like to state that I think it would be better to have some kind of self protection right now even if it needs a lot of improvement; I would rather have some of medium strengh now and have it improve after than a super protection 3 month later.
Al968
I have been reading all of your comments, thank you, but I will need to learn quite a bit more before I can contribute anything sensible to the discussion of this issue.
This site is much more extensive than I had realised. I have to say it`s good to be in the company of so many avast! fans, though.
Your welcome, just avast users helping other avast users get the best out od avast.