I installed avast free Anti Virus on my Win 7 machine yesterday. After the installation was complete, including updates, I decided to test whether the Anti Virus was working correctly. I downloaded the virus test file from http://www.eicar.org/86-0-Intended-use.html and saved it on my desktop. After waiting 10 minutes for avast to automatically warn of a virus, I gave up.So I decided to open the file in a notepad to check whether avast can detect it on opening. Still nothing…I could open the file and close it with avast doing anything. It was only when I right clicked on the the file and said Scan with Avast, did Avast detect it but I guess by then in a normal scenario it would have been too late.
I am extremely disappointed with the Real Time scanning abilities of Avast and am looking to uninstalling it and switching to AVG Free.
I only have Malware AntiBytes and a Zone Alarm Firewall on my machine. I did a complete reboot post installation, but did not notice any change in avast’s behavior. It is still not able to detect the EICAR test file (downloaded from the new link) as a Virus. Whats worse is that I can even open the EICAR Test File without avast raising any alert.Here’s a screenshot
i have done a bit of research. its only the .txt file which Avast does not alert on access (real time file system shield). a right click on demand scan detects it.
(capture 3&4)
tested the rest: site, exe are all blocked by real time shields (capture 1&2)
my guess is that by default, file shield does not scan .txt files when u read/write to it (refer to capture 5) (i guess opening the .txt file is reading it, not executing it)