Avast IM Shield & SECUNIA; Is Secunia causing recording of many items?

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Good morning everyone,

 I was just reviewing my various real-time shield logs and noticed the [b]IM shield [/b]  shows having scanned as many as 435 items (on Feb 16th).  I do [b]NOT[/b] use instant messaging programs to communicate with ANYONE, so I am wondering WHY Avast is recording IM activity at all?  Note:  I have never observed this type activity before.

Any enlightenment would be much appreciated!

Regards,

2

Maybe some IM-Program has set itself to the autostart without your permission? Please take a look at this.

DJBone

3

Post a “Last scanned file” that you can see inside the IM Shield. Maybe we will be able to pinpoint the IM messenger that’s running without your knowledge based on that. It’s usually fairly easy to find out.

4

O.K. Rejzor…here is a screenshot of the IM Shield log for your review. I appreciate your feedback too DJBone!

5

We can’t see the entire path and exact file over the “Last scanned” field in your screen shot.

6

Hmh, unfortunately i can’t see the full program path. Could you please extract the path?

DJBone

7

How do I do that DJBone? (I’m not much of a computer whiz)…sorry). Thanks.

8

Just move over the shown path with your mouse and it will be shown in full length. Then make another screenshot.

DJBone

9

Is this screenshot the one you were looking for?

10

Yes, thanks. But i can’t figure out which program is causing this traffic. The path is the temp-folder of your internet explorer. Could you please take a look at your task manager what processes are running?

DJBone

11

There are something like 51 processes currently running. Because the list takes up more than one page…there is no way to get a screenshot of every single process for you to see.

Something I should note here is that prior to February 16th, I had NEVER seen ANY activity recorded in either the IM or P2P shield logs. The only thing I did yesterday (Feb 16th was to download that Secunia program and use it.

Could this be causing this issue with the IM shield?

12

This could be possible. I’m not sure if Secunia installs some Adware with or without your permission.

DJBone

13

I’ll uninstall the program right now and observe the IM Shield log to see if there is any change & report back.

Thanks very much again for your time and help, and also to you ady4um!

14

the IM shield makes errors off and on, I reported that not long ago, when I noticed that it was scanning “dropbox”. Doesn’t happen anymore though.

15

Please report back the result.

DJBone

16

Success! Problem has been resolved DJBone & ady4um! Seems the Secunia program was causing all the massive numbers of items to be scanned since Feb. 16th in the IM Shield. Once I uninstalled it, the log now shows no more activity.

Onec again…my thanks to both of you for all your help on this one! My thanks also to you Logos for your feedback!

Best Regards,

17

can’t see how this could be related to secunia :-\ …

18

Well, secunia needs to transfer the info somehow so to provide you with the feedback, which is the whole point of secunia.

Interestingly, secunia is not listed in the programs list in IM Shield, but it may be using some additional common way to transfer the info and that’s what IM Shield is catching.

I wonder if installing secunia as “on demand only” would cause the same communication / detection issue, or if it is secunia itself or some “add-on / ad” thingy.

19

and how would you explain that secunia reported data “could” be seen and scanned as IM data by Avast ? … you probably know that do you … Not mentioning that the screenshot posted by the OP only shows some IE temp files scanned (and yes, I know that many utilities use IE to connect) …whatever, the bug is on Avast side.

20

oops guys … just launched Secunia (on demand here) and instantly tens of files started to get scanned by the IM shield :o okay that’s still an Avast bug.