Conflict Between McAffee and ACT

Discussion in 'other security issues & news' started by CE101, Aug 2, 2004.

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  1. CE101

    CE101 Registered Member

    Joined:
    Aug 2, 2004
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    Although the following is indeed a virus-related issue, the connection is rather tenuous, so please bear with me as I explain.

    I'm running the following software
    - VirusScan 8.0.41 (with Engine 4.3.20 and Dat 4.0.4382)
    - ACT! for Web 1.2.5
    - Outlook 2002
    - Windows 2000 SVP 4

    For those not familiar with the product, ACT is a contact management system and "ACT! for Web" is the Internet-enabled version, that allows databases to be accessed over the Web.

    ACTWeb works just fine, however I cannot run two consequetive sessions without first resetting Internet Information Services (IIS) at the DOS command prompt by running IISReset.
    For example, here's a typical scenario ...
    - I log onto my database, work on it for a minute, logoff
    - Five minutes later I try opening the database again, but invariably it just hangs

    The problem is documented in the ACT Knowledge Base at http://itdomino.act.com/act.nsf/docid/2002102513572 , where the Situation and the Solution are explained as follows:

    ---> Situation: You have recently installed ACT! 6.0, and are attempting to open the ACT! E-mail view. You have McAfee VirusScan or Internet Security software installed. When you open ACT! Email, you receive the following message: "ACT.exe has generated errors and will need to be closed by Windows". Or, the E-mail view may open successfully, but you experience errors when addressing an e-mail message.

    ---> Solution: This issue is commonly caused by a script blocking feature in some AntiVirus software. If you have one of the following McAfee products installed on your desktop computer, and would like to use ACT! 6.0 E-mail, you will need to disable the Hawk Script Stopper feature: McAfee VirusScan Professional or Home Edition 7.0, or McAfee Internet Security 5.0.

    I followed the recommended solution and disabled McAffee's ScriptBlocking feature and low and behold the problem went away. Although ACTWeb works fine now, I am not too pleased with the solution. The ScriptStopper is supposed to monitor running scripts for worm activity and I don't feel very comfortable having it off.

    As a result I called tech support at ACT. They told me that their application does indeed have VB script in it and hence the anti-virus software is doing its job.

    Next I contacted McAffee to find out if there is a way to configure VirusScan such that it will ignore ACTWeb's VB scripts. I was told that the current version of VS does not have this flexibility. I understand however that in earlier versions of McAffee VirusScan you could configure OutLook Hawk (the script blocking component) to ignore trusted applications.

    So now my question to you folks on this discussion site.... Do you know of any AV software that provides a configurable measure of script blocking?

    I understand that it's not wise (if not impossible) to have two AV products installed, so I'd be interested in finding one to provide only the script blocking, leaving all other AV functions for McAffee.

    Any suggestions? Your help will be greatly appreciated.
     
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