What does "Network Shield" resident scanner do?

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I’m curious as to what the Network Shield resident scanner does. When I examine the info/stats on it, it says it’s running but there is no other activity with it. It never shows it scanned anything. So, that made me ask…what it is suppose to do if I’m not seeing it do anything?

2

Network Shield is a protection against known Internet worms/attacks. It analyses all network traffic and scans it for malicious contents. It can be also taken as a lightweight firewall (or more precisely, an IDS (Intrusion Detection System).

Network Shield protects you from internet worms that spread themselves via various security holes in your system. Typicaly these kind of viruses don’t infect files but instead they attack running processes on your PC (either Windows components or some server programs like SQL Server, IIS etc.). These kind of attacks are not easily catched by ordinary antivirus during file or mail scanning. It is not a duplicate work with Standard Shield.

Basically, it covers all Internet worms. Such as Win32.CodeRed, Win32.SQLSlammer, Win32.Blaster, in32.Welchia (Nachi) and Win32.Sasser.

If you have Windows updated and a firewall, you won’t see Network Shield scanning (most probably).

3

Thanks for the thorough explanation.

4

Considering this explanation, If I’m running a separate firewall program, which for the sake of this discussion is assumed to be as least as effective as avast!'s network Sheild, would it not then be advisable to terminate the Network Shield to avoid potential compatibility issues and eliminate redundant processes?

5

First avast’s network shield is ‘not’ a firewall, only monitoring commonly exploited ports. If you firewall is worth its salt (I should hope it is much better than the network shield), the network shield shouldn’t even get a look in as that should intercept these exploits and I haven’t experienced any compatibility issues in a little over four and a half years I have been using avast.

My firewall Agnitum’s Outpost Pro went through a spell of complaining about the network shield, but that was confirmed as a problem with OP and not avast’s network shield, which has been corrected by Agnitum.

Should you temporarily disable your firewall and forget to enable it (or it is disabled by malware) then it would give limited protection on those ports that are monitored. If the network shield popped-up an alert it would act as an indicator that all might not be well with your firewall. So I would leave the belt and braces approach in place as it doesn’t consume much in the way of resources.

6

So with network shield I might not need Wormguard anymore
It pops up with suspicious files funny extensions etc from time to time

7

If I remember correctly aren’t you using win98 ?

Network Shield provider protects your computer from Internet worm attacks. It works similarly to a firewall, even though it does not fully substitutes it. The Network Shield does not require any user interraction.

Note: This resident provider is available on Windows NT, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, and 2008 only.

Normal. The setting does not have any meaning for this provider.
High. The setting does not have any meaning for this provider.

8

AH thanks DavidR
now that you reminded me I KNEW THAT
gotta do that sig :slight_smile:

9

Network Shield is not a firewall. You need a firewall.

They won’t conflict as Network Shield is not a firewall.

10

I think Network Shield is a very good “backup” protection in case your firewall somehow fails or you have some security holes (like harmful open ports) on your system.

11

Yes, it is :wink: