Mushy Peaches needs opinions??

Well guys & gals, Peaches went mushy a bit yesterday. Last night I had problems connecting to the internet and when I did I had trouble bringing up my favorite sites. So I did an Ad-Aware scan and found: [my name here]@server.iad.liveperson[2]txt and had that nasty deleted. But things were still not as smooth as it normally is. I did an AVG scan and it came up "no viruses found", Did SpyBot and all was well, nothing found. I checked my firewall ZoneAlarm Pro and there was no indication of any quarantines. So I shut everything down and off to bed I went. This morning as I was on the forums, lo & behold my Firewall popped up that Word wanted to act as a server and would I grant permission .. the answer was NO. Checked my firewall log & found one log where a virus with an obscene name was listening at a specific port which was blocked by ZAP. Now my antenna is up & flags raised. I have a problem! Did an online Panda scan and my goodness, I had a virus and 6 files infected. I did not open anything I shouldn't have so how did this critter get in? Was my Firewall Mailsafe asleep as well as AVG? ... both are always up-to-date. I am now of the opinion that AVG has to go and am looking into AVAST but wanting suggestions & opinions from all you experts here. . Is my ZAP really vulnerable? If it is, I shall try Sygate. . Hmm, now I am in a quandry as I thought I had it made!! Oh well, can't win them all even though I try to!!

Coincidence, the following just came up in my surfing. Would I be the first to be a victim given the above experience or is this report over-reactionary??

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/38909

Short extract : "Security firm eEye warns of a new vulnerability affecting both Zone Alarm and Black Ice software firewalls that could allow remote access and control of a user's system. "

 

That's an interesting one.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that that nasty came in through the browser, and AVG didn't have a def for it.

Interested in hearing more, Peaches. Good luck!

 

Peaches, there are a lot of opinions about AVG and avast! in this forum: http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=22260;start=0

Hope this help!

 

Thank you Technical .. I have been following that thread and seems like it's hands up for AVAST. I am not completely happy with AVG because lately I cannot get it to update when I want it to. [I changed nothing to cause this].. it is always a day behind .. not good enough for me. I guess I will try AVAST and see if I like it, if not, then I can always revert back to AVG. AVG did catch stuff for me that Norton AV didn't so there are pros & cons and it all boils down to what the user prefers & their needs.

 

You are completely right! Unfortunatelly, as far I know, the AVG automatic update must be at a certain time of the day (you must be connected at that time if you have a dial-up). The avast! update will occur 20 seconds after it detects a connection and then, if there is not an update, it will try 4 hours later in the same day...

If you need some help or troubleshoting I can try to help.
See you round.

 

Hi Peaches. I used to run Avast and had some problems. W98SE didn't want to shutdown, and sometimes it doesn't play well with other AV's. It didn't like my ZA too much either. I've forgotton what it did, but it wasn't good.

 

I am on cable and have AVG set to update at 11:00 a.m. every day - computer is running then. It never used to delay but for some reason it does now. However, even if I try to download manually, it will not download the current components. Oh well,

 

Hi BJ - I run WinXP and have ZAPro. MailSafe in ZAP works like a charm. Avast I have been reading here appears to be improving and getting good reviews now. My neighbor installed it today so will see how it goes for her ... if she has any problems I know I will hear about it. She too has ZAP, WinXP and is on cable. I think I will sit back and do a tad more checking for now.

 

Regarding the latest update from AVG I run AVG 7 and Sygate Pro and when then update was issued for the new components I could not access the update site again. Sygate asked if I allowed permission etc which I did but then I received the notice failed connection try again from AVG. I uninstalled the software completely thinking I had a corrupt download - reinstalled and all the updates ran smoothly until I reached the latest update and once again Sygate refusd to recognise the updater.

I have a router firewall so as a test I disabled Sygate and ran AVG's update and it worked this time downloading the latest virus defs. There was a lot of communication with the tech support at AVG who did not seem to know why this had happened apart from the fact there was a new updater exe in the download. I have now had to create a rule within Sygate to allow my updater for AVG even though it is listed in the allowed applications! Whatever AVG have done to the exe for updating Sygate Pro does not accept it and therefore the rule has to be created.

AVG have failed to come back when this was pointed out to them but it has certainly disappointed me regarding this AV. I feel they are sending us to various servers and this is why Sygate does not trust the IP addresses unless it is specified within an Advanced rule.

I hope this helps anyone else who has encountered this issue with AVG and Sygate Pro. It is the update exe in AVG that has caused the conflict