Hi,
I have two desktop computers in my house one private and one for work, mine has AVAST and the other (WORK) has another anti-virus (not my choosing). This is the free version and NOT paid.
I’d like to ask if AVAST could release updates for the definitions database more quickly or rather more frequently.
After sending viruses to virustotal.com usually from spam emails like UPS, Fedex and recently the IRS. I always send these via email to AVAST and this other company.
Several times the other company has sent an email in reply, thanking me and stating that the virus is new and will be added to the defs with the next update.
My questions isn’t related to getting an email to say thanks. It’s really this, the other day (not only then but many times) I sent the same email (about 8.30am) to both AVAST and the other AV at the same time with the same virus and the virustotal.com link. Less than 3 hours later the other company had already updated their database while AVAST didn’t detect it until the following evening.
I still prefer AVAST to this other one but I believe that AVAST would be better for the increase in frequency of its updates.
I hope somebody this this posting as what it is meant to be (a serious question) and not turn it into a knocking of AVAST!!!
Thanks
If I can say AVG. But as I said the company put this on the computer so it has nothing to do with me. As I said I have noticed, many times, that they are a lot quicker in adding to their database than AVAST. In fact I have 5 viruses in my chest which I sent to both. I’ve just updated both AVG and AVAST and AVG has detected them while AVAST still says they are clean!
Send the sample/s to avast as a Undetected Malware:
Open the chest and right click in the Chest and select Add, navigate to where you have the sample and add it to the chest (see image). Once in the chest, right click on the file and select ‘Submit to virus lab…’ complete the form and submit, the file will be uploaded during the next update.
Or
Send the sample to virus (at) avast (dot) com zipped and password protected with the password in email body, a link to this topic might help and false positive/undetected malware in the subject.
Sorry but update frequency has absolutely nothing to do with detection rate or it would be reflected in the various AV comparison tests were avast comes out better than many AVs with a higher update frequency.
Adding samples to the database has something to do with detection rate, if the samples haven’t been added the rate of update frequency won’t make a blind bit of difference.
There was some talk about s cloud style dynamic update before as there actually used to be push updates in the old version of avast Pro. I don’t know how far down the track this went, but again I honestly don’t believe it makes a huge difference.
Currently avast allows the paid options to check automatically for updates every 30 minutes (may be less). Now if there is an update available it will be downloaded automatically as it is now. Actually getting an update sooner probably won’t make a huge difference as it would rely on the fact that you encountered a virus that was included in the update in the time frame between updates.
I have been using the avast free version for over 7 years and I have never experienced a virus issue with avast and for the most part the updates weren’t as frequent as they are now, most days it was just one, but some days as many as 5 actual virus signature updates.
So for all of Norton’s pulse updates and some other AVs more frequent updates it doesn’t seem to be having a huge impact on their detection rates. Avast is still right up there with the others with an average of two updates a day, more frequently when required.
It really would be so easy to massage these figures on update frequency by just releasing a few/tens at a time and you could be having 24 updates a day, but it wouldn’t make a real difference to detection rates.
The answer was that such updating would generate way too much bandwidth expenses with very little benefit. That’s why the idea was scraped and it will most probably be replaced by a some form of cloud based scanning which will no replace the local scanner but will instead supplement it.
Hi, I’ve seemed to cause a stir here. It wasn’t my intention.
Anyway, I have just updated AVAST and the there are still some undetected by AVAST even though I reported them at the same time to AVG.
@ DavidR
“Send the sample/s to avast as a Undetected Malware:”
I already have to both AVG (1 file not detected by them but was by mid-day yesterday) and AVAST (all 6 files not detected).
I have just updated AVAST and scanned the files in the chest. There are still four which are clean.
I’ve just downloaded my email on outlook. There are four emails from the usual UPS, DHL or FedEx. I have to say that 3 are the same virus. I sent these to virustotal and they are already detected by AVG but not AVAST.
I think AVAST could have a lot higher detection rate, if the database was updated on a regular basis. I’ve seen 4-6 updates in a day with AVG but never that many with AVAST maybe 1 or 2
I think this is what the OP is talking about. The request (if I understand correctly) is not so much related to sending the updates to the users more frequently than it is done nowadays (about twice a day). This is off-topic.
The request points to, once Avast Team received the email (or any equivalent / available method to receive the sample), it should take less time to analyze it and add it to the next database update (whenever the next update would be released to users).
I personally don’t have any real nor statistical comparison, but it seems the OP indeed has (at least for the particular encountered cases).
Since the samples from the chest are sent to Avast during the next update, it could take several hours for those samples to get to the relevant people. Using the email method (zipping and password) “should” be, generally speaking, quicker (though, I don’t know which arrivals are checked “first” by Avast Team).
The key, IMHO, would be the difference in time between Avast and other security tools. If we are talking about some hours (next database update after the sample had been sent to Avast Team), fine. If we are talking about days…
OK, I’ve just updated the database (1100619-1) and rescanned the chest. Only one has been found positive now. So it has taken 36 hours to add one virus to the database. I think somebody at AVAST should really examine to see what’s happening, to see why adding to the database is (in this case) so slow and how to improve these updates. As you can imagine if I had thought that these emails where real (I bet somebody somewhere did!!), I would have had a virus or viruses on the computer for at least 48 hours as I don’t expect the next update will be until the morning.
All in all I think AVAST should review their updating.
I have also added other attachments to the chest and have sent them, with the VT links, to AVAST.
The AVG version on my work computer is the free version. The problem seems to be adding the viruses to an update and getting them out into the database.
INFORMATION
For what it’s worth, I’ve just updated AVAST (it says that it’s already up to date) 110621-0. I have rescanned the file that I sent to AVAST and it still comes up clean and it is now about 84 hours after being reported by me. :o I’ll write again when it’s detected at long last.