Well, I’ve done a bit of forum browsing and site browsing and haven’t found a bit on this issue (besides the suggestion to add this in posted a long time ago). Anyway, I was wondering if avast! Home or Pro edition have self-protection against malware/viruses from termination or manipulation. Lately there have been a lot of evil threats out there that target an antivirus specifically before doing the damage to the system and I’m just a bit concerned if avast! is ready to stand up against those threats (such as the recent Blackworm threat discussed at ICS).
No, there is no self protection that i’d be aware of. Though avast! is not the only one without it, so that isn’t really a serious problem.
I believe that to say is has no self protection would be incorrect.
See:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=17655.msg150246#msg150246
Well it does check its own components but on the other hand this is the very basic thing that ANY av should do it. Yet you can still terminate it without problems.
But when it’s terminated you notice that where in case of just modifications you won’t notice anything (probably).
Interesting…but I’ve also noticed AV’s like NAV ( I hate Symantec though :-X) has self protection in its newer version for 2005-2006+. I know a lot of AV’s out there today don’t really have that feature but I think this its rather an important issue for me to have another layer of protection to ensure you are always protected. I also know that avast! has no heuristics (except in the email scanner) so wouldn’t it be dangerous to leave it there with limited self protection? It means we avast! users entirely rely on signatures and on common sense in browsing to stay safe from the newest threats you haven’t yet added–and that seems a bit dangerous for me. Well anyway, I still like avast! a lot the way it is, but due to these issues I guess it would be nice if future versions either had complete heuristics (yes I know this has been suggested before, but still :P) or an advanced version of self-protection…but the real question is: will this ever be considered?? Just my 2 cents ;D