Avast 2014 Released

You can update the program through the program, too. It worked for me.

 

I've gotta say I like the GUI a lot better. Cleaner and easier to navigate.

 

Is DNT enabled by default?

 

DeepScreen seems to conflict with Windows 7 Start Orb Changer unless I disable it during the change. Will look into if it happens again in the future.

 

Softpedia: Avast! Free Antivirus 2014 – Review
October 16th, 2013,
http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/windows/Avast-Free-Antivirus-2014-Review-391493.shtml

 

I love the new version of Avast Free 2014 because I'm so please to see Rescue Disk bootable media is back from the dead since we had Avast BartCD in the past, which is a huge plus for users you can create a Rescue Disk bootable media (USB, CD, ISO) for offline scanning and cleaning. The tool is built on Windows PE (pre-installation environment) and, as such, it is recommended to create the media on a clean machine.

Basically, you will be able to boot into a new environment loaded with avast! Antivirus, which can be used to scan and clean the infected machine. It is a very light version of the application that can only scan defined areas.

I'm very happy with this release along side with my other security features side by side with Avast.

 

You can download from Avast

http://www.avast.com/en-in/download-software

 

What!?

 

Through my tests I find Avast linear in PUP detection.

PUP is disabled by default. I think PUP should be enabled by default for majority, experts can always choose to disable it. In my tests, with PUP disabled, many irritating stuffs gets installed, with PUP enabled, the prob is less.

With PUP enabled too, I find Avast linear in detection & misses many that other good AVs detect. This results into unnecessary autostart entries, processes, toolbars, other stuffs are downloaded during install, many shortcuts on desktop making it messy, hogging resources, system slowdown, browser crashing, etc...

 

I guess he posted the review first & tested later

 

Adds a little advertisement to outgoing e-mail...

Can be turned off though.

"This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active." With the avast! logo on the left.

rrrh1 (arch1)

 

To each his own, I guess. I was disappointed that for a lot of settings, Avast has started using popup windows that are bigger than the underlying window. (Avira does this, too, and I find it a minor annoyance there as well.) The windows are also too big to fit in a netbook's display (1024x600). And of course all the icons and other things trying to get you to pay for an "upgrade" - at least Avira has stopped doing that.

I must say, though, updates from Avast 8 went smoothly. Three systems (W7 32 bit netbook, W7 64 bit desktop, and an old XP laptop) all updated from within the Avast 8 app, and all updates went perfectly.

 

I thought this version of the free edition did not have the sandbox. Or am I missing something?

 

You can look at this Avast blog for further info:

https://blog.avast.com/2013/09/16/seeking-perfection/#more-18228

The pertinent section being:

"In version 2014 of avast! Antivirus, the AutoSandbox will be surpassed by DeepScreen technology."

Sadly it does not work.

 

I would have to agree. It doesn't work nearly as well as I hoped it was. Maybe it needs to be online for a while and it will start to detect things. The avast forum is pretty busy with minor bugs. Hopefully they'll take a look into it.

 

Because dyna-gen and DBT is not yet working as vlk mentioned:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=2288759#post2288759

Technologies will make effect only when then come into effect.

 

Also to mention that the CommunityIQ system is very effective now.Any files sent automatically seem to get detected within a day or two.I have been doing some testing and get great to see samples from these sensors are being given huge importance.

Any missed piece of malware was immediately sent by avast to the labs on next update attempt.I have been doing some extensive malware pack scanning and its really great to see fast reaction times for these type of automated sample submissions.

Though I would love to see deepscreen getting into the party soon

 

Running IE11, Opera 12.16 in the sandbox - videos, esp Youtube videos won't play, keep getting error message. Can reboot and that will sometimes fix it but it won't last more that a couple of videos.
Anyone else having this problem, or know of a fix?

 

I too wanna see how effective Deepscreen is against malware & especially ransomware.

 

Yes we all are...after seeing the effectiveness of everything else,it is getting really interesting

 

Hi guys,

Let me react to some of the comments here.

I'd like to find out more about how you do the test, exactly. The thing is, the DeepScreen technology requires a reboot under XP. That is, have you rebooted the computer after installing avast, before running the test?

Also, I have heard about some problem (a bug?) where the first DeepScreen'ed file is always undetected. I don't know if it's true or not, but do you do this in a VM (and you always unfreeze it from an image, before executing each sample), or you run them in the same boot session one after each other?

What? You call a 50% on [otherwise undetected] malware samples flipping a coin? I'd agree, but only if we were not talking about malware samples, but all files in the world... But a 50% incremental detection, with virtually no FPs, is not exactly bad, is it?


In general, DeepScreen is currently far from reaching its full potential. We had to disable the Dynamic Translation layer for a while (because of some technical issues) but these should be fixed promptly. Also, DynaGen is not up'n'running yet. So, currently, DeepScreen's detection rates are only a tad better than the ones of Autosandbox in v8, but I'm quite confident that they will get substantially better in the next couple of weeks or so.

Cheers
Vlk

 

vlk- I assumed that the current version was the finished 2014 product. If a major layer of defense was still not up to standard, shouldn't it have been still been labeled a beta?

With, then, the current development stage in mind I will refrain from any further criticisms (as they would be unfair), but would appreciate a PM when you consider DeepScreen to be at optimal levels.

Regards,

Meghan

 

Why PM?
They should ring all the bells about it!
I expect to see an article on avast blog.

 

Again, as I said here, we didn't want to hold the release (that contains a bunch of other improvements that our users can benefit from) until this was fully done. Especially since all of DeepScreen magic is wrapped in the definitions database (so it can be seamlessly updated at any time).

This is an long-running, ongoing project for us. I myself am a bit disappointed that we weren't able to have everything ready for the v2014 launch, but I'm still a big believer in this technology and feel that we're not too far. (Plus, the team is already working on something that will be in version N+1 and will take the concept even further... but I can't share too much detail on that for now).

So please, stay tuned, there's a group of people working on getting this done asap here.

Thanks
Vlk

 

any good deals around for the Suite?