Does avast! have heuristic?
Hi and welcome to the Forum ;),
No, currently Avast Antivirus does not contain heuristic exept for mass mailers; however Avast 5.0 is expected to have heuristics. Please be aware that even though Avast does not have heuristic it still performs very well in detecting malware.
Al968
Thanks you very much 
I would like to give you the date it will be released but currently it is unsure, maybe Vlk or Igo will tell us ;D
Al968
Good Thanks again 
P.S. Sorry for my bad English
The features for avast 5 haven’t been fully announced (they have been very tight lipped about avast 5), there is a topic or two in the forums, but they don’t directly call it heuristics as that has some sort of clear definition but a behaviour blocker would be closer to the HIPS definition. There is also meant to be more generic signature detections and anti-kill to prevent it from being disabled.
An advanced forum search for “avast 5” by User: vlk,igor returns many hits, but it is still a job to find any the features.
however Avast 5.0 is expected to have heuristics.For Standard Shield (on-access scanning)? I don't think so...
Edit: David, don’t worry that much about quotes :-*
Tech, I don’t know how you quoted that, but it was said by al968 and quoted in my post, but most certainly not said by me as my comments in the rest of the post attest.
I sort of like this kind of speculations… carry on, this is so inspiring… 
You could always end the speculation with a couple of hints ;D
The features for avast 5 haven't been fully announced (they have been very tight lipped about avast 5)
They’re based on your comments about heuristics and avast 5…
Like David said, you can stop all speculations if you say a little more about avast 5 and then, we’ll shut up 8)
We have many things written on the paper; however, not too many things actually implemented. I’m sorry but I don’t think it’s a good idea to promise (or even disclose) a feature until it’s more or less certain that it’s going to make it to the final product.
What I can promise is that you guys will be one of the first to know.
Cheers
Vlk
We’re proud of this. Thanks.
I could cope with anything you guys have in mind. So far i’ve supported every decision even though it wasn’t looking that well from users perspective. Some were even improved, mostly generic detections which i’d like to see even more. After all, if you don’t have the heuristic engine, generic ones can do almost as good. Not in detecting new malware but at least countless variants of existing ones which are usually the most problematic anyway regardless of all the outbreaks.
Heuristics are OK if done right, But I’ve run some AV programs that had so many FP they were pretty much useless. So Vik, if you and the team are going to add this to Avast, Please take your time and make sure it’s right. ( I already know you will )
Which ones?
Granted it’s been a few years so things may have changed. One was AVG, I had many FP’s with it and their almost total lack of support made turning off Heuristics easier than trying to get help. Another was several early versions of NAV, but at least with NAV you could turn down the sensitivity.
My personal experience:
AVG: few false positives, poor support.
NAV: rarely, very few, false positives, extremely poor support.
Hi, all.
I think that if heuristic would be added in avast! it’s will be good to make “Heuristic” as one of resident. In this case users can swith it off if they really don’t need it (or for some other reasons).
On another side it’s great idea if avast! could control all processes in OS (but there could be some problems with firewalls, like Outpost), imho.
2Add-Aware, take a look - you are in the DavidR’s signature! What are you doing there?
(DavidR, I’m sorry, it’s just a joke ;))