Misleading virus detection dialogue

Hi,

Using the latest free home version of avast!, I found the following dialogue quite misleading.

http://www.btinternet.com/~matt_mills/temp/avast.jpg

Surely if you unplug the network cable, you won’t be able to do much with the infected file! :slight_smile:


Welcome to the forums, alpha! :slight_smile:

And why not? Since the virus is on your computer, it is up to you to take the proper action as offered on that warning. Unplugging a network cable prevents farther spreading of the virus to other computers until the infected computer is cleaned and/or the virus is moved to the chest where it can do no harm.

I hope this helps you. :slight_smile:


I think you are missing my point.

The infected file is on a network share (see the image, \Nicklap\shareddocs\install.exe). If you unplug the network cable you will not be able to move/rename/delete/repair/move to chest or anything.

If the system that the network share is on is yours or protected by avast it should still be able to deal with it even if you pulled the plug and should limit potential further spread.

If your system detected it because you accessed the share but didn’t contain the network share, pulling the network cable should keep you secure and then you would either have to deal with the problem in the shared folder or report it to the person responsible or this action.

Yes at first it seems strange saying to disconnect from the network because you won’t be able to access the share to deal with the problem. avast isn’t a network solution (for that you may need the server version) but a stand alone system, so it may not be able to deal with it on anther system in the network.

However, I don’t see why it would give options to move, delete, etc. if it was on another system and not be able to deal with it. So was the shared folder on your system or another on the network ?

DavidR, the file was on another computer connected to the LAN at the time.

I think perhaps this whole matter is just a difference of opinion. I was just thinking that if you unplug the network cable, all the functionality that the dialogue offers will be redundant.

Never mind!

Yes it may well be redundant, but I’m not sure even if you left it connected that those options would have been valid/worked. This may well be because avast 4 Home/Pro is a stand alone system protection and it is geared up to deal with issues on the standalone system, although it does recognise local traffic.

It would be nice to know one way or the other though.

Perhaps a test downloading the eicar test and copy it into the network share and assess it from your system, it should alert, leaving the network cable connected and see if it can move/rename or delete, etc.

Welcome to the forums.

Guys, I think you’re going “too deep”.
Right, the message doesn’t give much sense in this particular case.
avast! doesn’t really distinguish if the file is on local disk or network, so this common dialog is used in both cases.

Agreed! Thanks for your input.

DavidR, FYI I was able to “move to chest” the infected item straight over the network no problems.


Thanks, alpha, for sticking to it. I did mis-understand your point. And thanks, Igor, for the valuable input! :slight_smile:


DavidR, FYI I was able to "move to chest" the infected item straight over the network no problems.

I assume that you had write access to the network share - otherwise you copied it to your virus chest and left it happily sitting on the network share.

Yeah, I had full access on the network share, the infected file is gone.