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I’ve posted some articles about antivirus and antispyware in the last posts. Here’s now a follow-up to antivirus category for you who’re interested in freewares especially protection applications for internet security.
What’s new is … avast! antivirus Home Edition now includes ANTI-SPYWARE protection, certified by the West Coast Labs Checkmark process, and ANTI-ROOTKIT DETECTION based on the best-in class GMER technology.
And Last but not least the interesting part is “No additional purchase is required!” Yeah, that is avast! antivirus Home Edition, anti-spyware & anti-rootkit for Windows! (i’m thinking about AVG Free Edition, which i also use 
, yeah you might already know that i use 2 antivirus programs; both AVG and avast!, you can read the reviews in the last post, avast! Home or AVG Free Antivirus? which’s BETTER to Protect Windows XP, Vista)
>> Security Hole in version 4.7 Fixed
Version 4.7 of the avast virus scanner contains a security hole that allows local users to escalate their privileges on systems. The new version 4.8 fixes the flaw and adds anti-rootkit and anti-spyware functionality to the security software.
The vulnerability enables local users to access systems at system privilege level and is caused by flaw in the aavmker4.sys driver. When processing IOCTL input-output requests the driver does not adequately check user input, which can be exploited to overwrite arbitrary memory areas using specially crafted requests. Version 4.7.1098.0 and potentially earlier versions of the driver are affected, reports Tobias Klein in a security advisory.
Version 4.8 of avast was released this weekend and fixes the problem…More details are available from heise-online page here.
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So what is the main NEW Features in avast! 4.8 ???
1. Anti-spyware built-in
2. Anti-rootkit built-in
3. Strong Self-protection
1. Anti-spyware built-in
Certified by West Coast Labs Checkmark certification process, avast! antivirus 4.8 now comes with anti-spyware capability built in to the scan engine.
avast! antivirus 4.8 now offers even more protection for your valuable data and programs, all in one download.
2. Anti-rootkit built-in
Another key feature of avast! antivirus 4.8 is the inclusion of anti-rootkit technology, based upon the class-leading GMER technology, and now built-in to the scan engine as standard.
Rootkits are programs that install on your system, while keeping themselves, their processes, services and registry keys hidden, to stay invisible. They represent a substantial security risk on home and company networks and standalone machines, and are usually notoriously difficult to find and remove.
avast! antivirus 4.8 has full live-system anti-rootkit protection. No boot disks required, it’s all built-in and working with one install.
3. Strong self-protection
A significant security feature has also been added to avast! itself. avast! antivirus 4.8 now includes strong self-protection, to prevent malware from turning avast! protection off.
This key enhacement helps to add that extra layer of protection to protecting your data and programs with the multi-award winning avast! antivirus technology.
More Details in case you’re interested in this antivirus freeware:
What’s New in avast! version 4.8?
+ avast! now contains a built-in anti-rootkit protection
+ avast! now comes with a built-in anti-spyware protection
+ new self-defense function to prevent active malware from terminating avast! processes as well as corrupting avast! files and registry items
+ scanners now display a progress of current scan (percentage of work done)
+ fixed a vulnerability in AavmKer4.sys kernel-mode driver (problem applies to Windows NT/2000/XP, 32-bit only); special thanks to Tobias Klein
+ improvements in boot-time scanner (detection & removal of hidden or hard to delete files)
+ boot-time scanner will not start when booting into Safe Mode (the program was “invisible” in that case, no progress/messages could be seen)
+ improvements in many unpackers
+ IM Shield: added support for QQ
+ ACE and RAR unpackers now work even in boot-time scanner
+ improvements in handling of NTFS streams
+ removed a small memory leak in one of avast! drivers (Windows Vista and XP 64-bit only)
+ added support for 64-bit WHS connector (available in WHS Power Pack 1)
+ Internet Mail provider now displays the name of the sending/receiving program in the tooltip of its taskbar icon
+ greatly improved performance of the updater, especially in cases where many increments are being downloaded (e.g. avast! installations with outdated virus definitions)
+ implemented a protection against false positives in critical system files
+ resolved a compatibility issue with Acronis TrueImage (XP 64-bit only)
+ silent installation now also includes scheduled tasks, if any
+ compatibility tests with Vista SP1 and XP SP3
Interested? you can visit the official website and download avast! 4.8 Home Edition for absolutely FREE here.
+ Read more Recommended Posts about INTERNET SECURITY
+ Read more Recommended Posts about TWEAK INTERNET SPEED
+ Read more Recommended Posts about TWEAK WINDOWS
www.HWDOT.com
Recommended BROWSER > Mozilla Firefox ( 2X Faster than Internet Explorer).
Hi! Welcome to 
Great, avast 4.8 just detected trojan viruses on my pc, the trojan which successfuly made me very..2x mad! My computer was very slow n frequently hang, after startup, start menu (desktop) didn’t show at all! And my Avg 7.5 didn’t detect it! (even it’s already auto-updated, my pc online almost everyday)
I downloaded avast 4.8 and after scanning (in windows xp proffesional SAFE Mode), avast recognized some trojans, one of them was.. win32:patched-ff (trj) , avast found it on c:/windows/system32/sens.dll. It couldn’t repair, so i deleted it. Dunno what’s the use of moving to chests??? It cant repair, i prefered deleting, if it’s a win system file, just repair my windows..smart huh? :>. And the others were any kind of trojans.Agent (not remember the details)
I really hate trojans, virusses, spywares, malwares, and any kinds of them!!
Hehe btw, hwdot, thanks for your posts. I’ve read your tips to tweak startup n shutdown speed too..They’re very useful for my slow pc. It’s faster now. Great. I’m looking forward to ur new posts. =)
I think what makes this antivirus great is: its complete features (like its built-in antispyware & antirootkit protection) for such a ‘Free’ edition. Hope that those built-in features will last in future, if not, i’ll absolutely switch off. Those features are a minimum standard for antivirus!
thanks for the anti virus much appreciated jack westbury
Avast! has a lot a false positives.
fine
semoga ada tip untuk mempercepat akses internet lewat gprs
Avast 4.8… not a good antivirus at all! frequently hangs ur PC. tried it on both Vista/XP with same problem of frequent hanging.
@peace
you may try avg instead of avast!
it runs well on my pc, even ‘dual-mode’ with avg
Why do people complain about avast?! I mean seriously the only reason why you GOT TO COMPLAIN about it is that IF IT WERE A PAID VERSION, you would have thought “Hey, I can’t believe I spent $29.99 at Wal-Mart.”When just a simple download like avast! could have HAD A PROBLEM, like another paid version brand, and then you can say hey it was free no worries.”
am at present using avg protection which is very efficient indeed the problem with avg is that security warnings pop up for no reason whatsoever at times i did try avast before avg and found your protection also very efficient and satifactory i admit i made a silly mistake and would appreciate to have avast reinstalled please
Dear,
The Win32:Patched-FF reported by John might not be trojan. My machine is equipped with avg7.5 (not the avg8 though). I scanned mine yesterday and found nothing suspicious on my machine.
Not enough, I also scanned my notebook with NOD32 (online scan) and the result is “clean”.
Today, I re-scanned with bitdefender (online scan) and found that my sens.dll is infected with Trojan.Patched.BD. It said disinfection failed, deleted failed.
Holyshit.
I got nervous.
But not mad enough to manually delete it.
I went to jotti online malware scan at http://virusscan.jotti.org
and send the sens.dll to be scanned with 20 engines.
And the results is
only 4 engines found sens.dll is infected (including avast, as Win32:Patched-FF)
POSSIBLY INFECTED/MALWARE (Note: this file was only classified as malware by scanners known to generate more false positives than the average scanner. Do not consider these results definately accurate. Also, because of this, results of this scan will not be recorded in the database.)
Si I leave that file untouch
I appreciate the way the defense system of Avast works. I must agree with you that ‘Defense is Attack’
Keep believing in yourself you guys at Avast…
Shai (Shillong, India)
Avast is simply superb. I do a research on most commonly available anti spyware and anti virus…you need to use this to believe it everything for free….this is the best part and does not eat system resources. This is a must for all users who want to protect their system efficiently.
Please send me avast antispyware 4.8 update free. Thanks for home only.
@ca jakate
You can grab avast Home edition program for FREE directly from the official website.
For auto updates, in avast! setting you can set ‘automatic update’, and everytime you’re online it will be updated automatically.
For manual updates, on desktop icon, select ‘Updating’ and choose ‘iAVS update’ or “program update”
For avast Home license key, it’s free, only provide your email to get the key from the official avast! Home, it will be sent to you by avast!.