Does Avast protect us from A.D.S.?

Hello.

I was just wondering if the Home version or any version of Avast will protect a pc from infection via a ADS type of download? I believe ADS is a feature of Windows and uses NTFS. If anyone here knows the answer I would certaintly apprerciate hearing from you. Thanks in advance for any information. :slight_smile:

By ads are you talking about popups, ad banners, images in web pages or are you talking about messenger, which I think you are.

People are hijacking the windows messenger service (not msn messenger) for advertising purposes and not what it was intended for (messages from the system administrator when he notifys users of upcoming shutdown, backups, etc.)

It has nothing to do with ntfs. You need to disable the messenger service, search windows start, help and support.

Oh you have probably avast canā€™t do anything, unless it is virus activity.

HTH David

Hi DavidR.

Thanks for your response. No, ADS in this case does not mean ads like pop-ups etc. I should have been more concise with my question. ADS stands for A.=Alternate
D.=Data
S.=Stream
Its a feature found in Wins NT filing system which supports N.T.F.S.
which in turn supports multiple data streams. Kaspersky Labs has purportedly put out a warning of their alleged discovery of a virus which uses A.D.S. to infect a computer. Read www.hackersprogrammers.com/articles/ads2.htm
This article further explains what may be a new generation of malicious
programs for Wins 2000. Quote ā€œBy default most virus programs check
only the main data streamā€. This is why I asked my original question in this post. Would be curious to hear what the Devs say about this or get their opinion on it. Thanks for your reply though. :slight_smile:

Yes avast scans all ntfs data streams if you check the ā€˜Scan archivesā€™ box.

BTW the acronym ADS is really not widely used so me myself also thought you were referring to ads (promotional/commercial contents) :slight_smile:

Vlk

Ok iā€™d ask here what are default packers settings for Home Edition?

Does HE scan NTFS streams,DOS SFX and Win32 SFX packages by default?
Does Explorer Extension in HE scan all packers,all files regardless of extension and without virus targeting?
Does Internet Mail in HE scan all packers?

I also have a question about that Send infected message checkbox. Mine is unchecked,but mail was still sent. It was desinfected (EICAR),but message was sent anyway. Is this normal? Some n00b questions hehe,but iā€™m really curious :slight_smile:

Thanks for your response. No, ADS in this case does not mean ads like pop-ups etc. I should have been more concise with my question. ADS stands for A.=Alternate D.=Data S.=Stream

We learn a little more each day, thanks for the expansion and link.

Actually its NTFS ADS - New Technology File System - Alternate Data Streams :stuck_out_tongue:

Iā€™m happier now, since I didnā€™t convert my FAT32 (NTFS-ADS only works on nfts) drive format to NTFS when I upgraded to XP Pro.

Dont worry,you most probably wonā€™t meet such virus. Anyway every virus/worm/trojan infects only if you execute it.

VLK,

To you and the others that rersponded I thank you very much for input provided. I thought it was something I wanted to find out the results of and I have. Thanks again to all. :slight_smile:

The Home Edition and the Profesional version have the same archive files scanning capabilities. By default, I think only the High sensitivity (ā€˜scan archivesā€™ like Vlk said).

I think not - but I can be completely wrong - because the reported errors of ashQuick.exe are much less than the Simple User Interface. You can scan a password protected file and it wonā€™t report itā€¦ You will feel that the file is clean but without knowing it is password protected.

On other hand, parts of avast must use the same engine for scanning and that makes me think the scanning will be the same as defined in your settings ::slight_smile:

I think only the High sensitivity will do it by default.

Well, only if you check the message will be denied to be sent ???
If you sent uninfected mail (clean) it will be sent anyway, didnā€™t it ???