Cyberhawk problem and program issues

I have had a problem with Cyberhawk that no one else seems to have. It won't load. I have two computers with pretty much the same software. Except on one I have Prevx1 and Cyberhawk on the other. The Cyberhawk won't load when I reboot. I tried re-downloading it but that didn't work.

 

Hi WilliamP--

Sorry that you're having trouble with Cyberhawk. If you contact our technicians at http://www.novatix.com/support with more details they'll be able to help walk you through some various procedures and have you check some things to hopefully get you up and running. For instance, when you say "won't load" do you don't see the tray icon or the various Cyberhawk services aren't running? The tray icon issue is a known issue that should be fixed in our next release.

Becky Dubrow

 

@Becky Dubrow - Cyberhawk

I am using/testing CH on three machines at home primarily in preparation for possible eventual use in my corporate environment (35 machines). Generally speaking, it seems to have installed and run without any problems at all (tray icon or otherwise). It is difficult to get any feel for just how effective it is because it is so simple to use <g> and it doesn't present much in the way of what it is actively doing. This is a good thing for the average user but, perhaps a bit of a - shall we say - "curiosity" for admin support at times.

I am less concerned about the "phoning home" privacy issues than most who have commented in these forums. I concur that community based data from a broad "in use" environment is really the only way to effectively analyze and develop resistance to malware assaults. Although, I do believe that you should have a total "opt-out" button for eliminating all communication, news, updates, and data transmission.....at least that would address those among us who believe in UFOs.....<g>

I have been using CH since late May during your earlier beta phases. Through that time your installation help indicated a general roadmap for CH development. Currently, Novatix seems to have fallen off that earlier schedule. Can you give a roadmap update? And, as you mentioned in this thread, when and what will the next release be?

BTW: The CH website needs a forum (!!!) and needs to contain your Roadmap of features and schedule. Also, what about the "paid" version....news, feature set, dates, etc......

Thanks!!!

 

You're exactly right, galileo. We understand that this is an issue. In the simplest terms, Cyberhawk is a behavior blocker and so it just sits and watches and analyzes system behaviors until it sees something that may be suspicious. If through its analytics it doesn't detect anything to worry about, it has no reason to "bother" you to tell you that there is nothing going on. We are constantly struggling to find the right balance for users who LIKE that it sits there quietly and is only seen when needed and those users who want to see more feedback or understand more deeply what's going on.

Down the road (don't have more exact timeframe just yet) we do hope to have a small business version which will include a centralized management console that will give Admins some additional reporting and control features.

This is how turning off Community Protection is supposed to work--no update notifications, no survey prompts, no transmissions, etc. We realize there's an issue now where the setting isn't sticky, but this is scheduled to be corrected in the next release.

We're not too far off where we had hoped to be. We stated that the next version, which is the paid Pro version, would be released in November. We've slipped just a bit, but we still hope to release in December. The model is a little different from what we're doing now. There will only be one actual download available, but this will include all versions--basic (free), Pro and a 15-day Pro trial. All versions will start out as a 15-day trial of the Pro version. After the 15 days you can either register the Pro version for continued access to all Pro features (namely quarantining & threat removal, rootkit scanner and custom rules) OR you can continue using the free version as long as you like. The free version will work in almost the same way as it does now, with just a few design and layout changes. Basic functionality and program effectiveness will not change. And to be clear, there is no difference between protective quality between basic and Pro versions. It was very important to us that we not compromise protection or use that as a differentiating feature between the versions.

And we do hope to add a forum to our site down the road as well. We've been more focused these days on improving the product first and getting out the next release, but we'll get there soon and then we can move on to other things.

Thanks for all your comments and for using Cyberhawk--we appreciate your support!

Becky Dubrow

 

Hi Becky. I want to participate in Community Protection. What I do NOT want is for CH to use its open channel in order to send me invitations to participate in surveys, etc.

Turning off Community Protection in order to stop the other stuff is like the proverbial "throwing the baby out with the bath water."

Can't CH allow users to opt out of news, surveys, etc but still allow participation in Community Protection?

 

Hi bellgamin--

You describe exactly what we hope to do in a future release. We do hope to allow differing levels of "opt outs" in a future update--basically you'll be able to choose which communications you wish to receive. But to start, it will still be "internet communication allowed" or "no internet communication allowed" for most items. Surveys do allow opt outs right now--at your 3rd survey request prompt you'll be able to opt out of all future requests and doing so will stop the survey requests.

It's our goal to make Cyberhawk as user-friendly as possible, including configurability of all options settings.

Thanks again for your comments and feedback!

Becky Dubrow

 

Hello Cyberhawk Support. I just wanted to let you know if you don't already. That there are two very bad reviews about CH on Download.com. I have used your software and will again with it's next release, and have never personally had any major problem other than the System Restore problem that was fixed very quickly. I know not to pay attention to some of these crazy reviews, but a rebuttal of some sort about the claims they're making may not be a bad idea. I am still looking forward to the next release, and I hope you understand that I mention this in order to help with, and not hinder the great work you are doing with Cyberhawk.

 

Thanks, duke1959.

We have seen the reviews and will be posting responses. We appreciate your continued support!

Becky

 

I'm currently running CyberHawk 1.2.0.39 beside Sandboxie, Opera, ProSecurity, and Avira antivirus on Win XP Home SP2 with some updates. I downloaded it based on the reviews here in another thread about HIPS tested, where CyberHawk finished just behind DefenseWall (which has some sandboxing). So, I installed Sandboxie and then CyberHawk.

I think sandboxing is something CyberHawk ought to look into, perhaps as an optional installable component. Maybe an arrangement with Sandboxie could be made.

CyberHawk runs beautifully with the several programs I am using. No complaints whatsoever. As for download.com's reviewers, I take all reviews on that and some other websites with a large grain of salt, whether pro or con.

 

Thanks for your suggestion and comments, Chuck57. We'll keep the sandboxing idea in mind for down the road. I'm glad Cyberhawk is working well for you.

Becky

 

I have difficulty understanding whats wrong with CH being silent. If nothing bad is going on it should be silent IMO. My Antivir is dead silent - good. My firealarm is also built to be silent when no fire or smoke is about - even better.

Firewall - same there after some simple setupchanges.

Defensewall - also designed to be silent.

If you want to know if CH is working - open the GUI and you can read what it has done lately when it comes to watching over your machine. If thats not enough - why not test it?

If you want popups to confirm your software is alive and kicking I suggest buy another kind of software. If CH shall aim to please all - both us silence-lovers and the popup-lovers it might end up pleasing none. So an opt-out on all the none-relevant popups is a must IMO.

Best Regards

 

Excellent analogy with the fire alarm, Rivalen. Makes the point perfectly.

I believe it's more the novice users (our target market, really) who are so used to seeing pop-ups or reports or what have you from their current firewall or antivirus or anti-spyware, that they think something is lacking in CH exactly because it's quiet. If they see no activity, then imagine after a trial period has ended: they believe they have received nothing of value from the product or they even forgot that they installed it, and so they don't purchase it or, worse yet, simply uninstall.

We understand your point though, and it's been expressed by others, so I'm sure we'll work more comprehensive "configurability" into later versions of CH.

Becky

 

That's right Rivalen. When I loaded CyberHawk I ran all the programs I normally use and allowed them. Then, I rebooted. Did the same thing with ProSecurity in learning mode, and rebooted and turned off learning mode.

I forgot Sandboxie. CyberHawk and ProSecurity both warned me. I've had a few other warnings from them since, with programs I didn't allow. They work.

I don't go online to read popups. Mostly, except for a few minutes here and there, my computer time is supposed to be productive. In my work, I need occasional time away to think something out, so I surf to get my mind off it and let my subconscious deal with the problem. I want security software that isn't pestering me during that time. CyberHawk is excellent. As far as I'm concerned, it proved itself in the 6 HIPS tests in another thread. It came in second. Had DefenseWall not included a sandbox, CyberHawk might have finished first. It sits there and keeps its mouth shut until something happens, which is what it should do.

 

Stop using Cyberhawk as it got breached the other day while I was putting it through some Real Life test...browsing every where and anywhere, anyways what happened was Mozilla firefox 2.0 got buffer overflowed which cyberhawk prompted and tried to shut down the browser but instead cyberhawk got destroyed, complete shut down of cyberhawk, some crazy exes' got downloaded onto my comp but my HIPS caught it before it could run....PS I dont use fire fox with any addOns, my security setup during the testing was Comodo firewall with GSS + cyberhawk. Did another test b4 this one just with Cyberhawk and no GSS or Comodo, same scenario buffer overflowed prompted to shut down but got HOSED. Thank goodness for imaging software

 

We would be very interested in following up on this if you could provide the sites that were visited in the cases you described. In our own testing of Cyberhawk's buffer overflow protection we find it very effective so far. If you have found cases where it seems it is being breached, then we would very much like to check into it.

It's difficult to provide a response one way or the other to a general post like this where no specifics are given to allow us to confirm any potential problem.

However, if you can provide the details of the compromised websites you visited through PM or by contacting us directly at http://www.novatix.com/support, we will absolutely look into it and let everyone know what we discover.



Becky Dubrow

 

I personally prefer older versions of CYBERHAWK. Recent releases are starting to tax my XP Pro.

Is it possible to purchase any of the earlier versions of our choosing?

Thanks

 

It would be helpful if you could contact our technicians at http://www.novatix.com/support to describe what type of trouble you're having with the recent versions. We want to make sure we're aware of all issues so that we can try to address them. In general, the feedback we've had on the latest version, as far as performance issues are concerned, is that we have greatly improved over earlier versions. Every system is different though, and if for some reason an earlier version works better for you, please just contact our technicians and they can arrange for you to get an earlier build. It's all free right now, so no charge.

Becky Dubrow

 

No transmissions, etc.? I have updates and Community Protection turned off. Despite that, when either the main console or the status dialog opens, Cyberhawk attempts to connect to services.novatix.com. I wonder what it's doing.

 

Currently there is a problem with the Community Protection setting and it is not operating as intended, as I indicated in the 2nd sentence of the quote you referenced:

Again, this issue is known, and is being addressed in our next update, hopefully coming within the next 3 weeks (or sooner!).

What Cyberhawk is actually doing here is attempting to get an update on the Cyberhawk Community Protection statistics shown on the main Security Status tab. This is checked once every 4 hours, or upon opening the Cyberhawk GUI or Status dialog. If you have Community Protection set to Off, it should NOT be checking at all, but should instead present cached values.

Full details on all Cyberhawk activity is provided in our Privacy Policy here:

http://www.novatix.com/Privacy.aspx

Hope that helps clarify.

Becky Dubrow

 

Ok my bad on my statement, it appears I was using version 1.10 in my Real Life testing, , I just got a copy of your latest 1.2.0.39, if there is another version besides this one please let me know. Gonna try it out again, back to the High Risk "No-No" sites....to be continued.

 

1.2.0.39 is the latest version. I'm very hopeful that you'll see much improved performance with this version, but let us know if you run into anything we should know about. We appreciate your following up!

Becky

 

Becky, I have noticed that in about the last week or so, versions downloaded from cnet, and I dont know the version number, has really slowed my systems down. That was never the case until just recently. Nothing else has changed. Just thought I would mention it.

 

System slowdown is often caused by a 3rd party conflict of some sort, usually with another security application. We are aware of some conflicts and we've been working on resolving them, but it would be helpful to know what other security apps you may be running so that we can test the setup in house. Or, between the time you had the earlier version of Cyberhawk and getting the newest version did you install any other new apps?

In general, most users are seeing much less slowdown with our later versions since we've addressed a great majority of the earlier conflicts. Obviously we want to keep working on it if it's still an issue for folks.

Becky

 

I understand and the only other vendors I am currently sharing space with are Nod and Avira.

 

Thanks--I'll have our QA department take a look at this combo to see if we can reproduce any slowdow.

Becky