Avast! v4.5 Released 13 Nov 04

[murrshot]

Just in case anybody that uses didn't know (like myself).


Support for new archives and packers

The scanning engine of avast! 4.5 adds support for a new set of file archivers and packers of executable files. Relatitely wide archive support of avast! 4.1 was extended with new support for ISO, CHM, 7ZIP, RPM, CPIO and TNEF archives. A change has been also made to the Win32 Exec unpacker which should now cover considerably more packed executables (especially AsPack'ed ones).

Network Shield

A new resident protection module was added to avast! 4.5: the Network Shield. It is meant as a protection against known Internet worms/attacks. It analyses all network traffic and scans it for malicious contents. It can be also taken as a lightweight firewall (or more precisely, an IDS (Intrusion Detection System)).

The Network Shield is only available on NT-based systems (Windows NT/2000/XP/2003).

Support for new P2P and IM programs

The IP and P2P Shields have been extended so that now they can protect much broader range of messaging/P2P applications. Namely, the following instant messaging programs are now supported: AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), Gadu-Gadu*, Gaim*, ICQ*, Miranda*, mIRC*, MSN/Windows Messenger, Psi Jabber*, Odigo*, Trillian, Yahoo! Messenger; the following P2P program are now supported: Ares*, BearShare, BitTorrent*, CZDC++*, Direct Connect, Direct Connect++, eDonkey*, eMule*, iDC++*, iMesh, Kazaa, Kazaa Lite, LimeWire*, Morpheus* Opera's DC++*, Overnet*, Shareaza*, SoulSeek*, StrongDC++*, WinMX*

Protection of the applications marked by an asterisk (*) is available on Windows NT, 2000, XP, and 2003 only).

Transparent email (SMTP/POP3/IMAP4) scanner

The Internet Mail provider has been enhanced so that it is now able to filter email traffic automatically, without the need of reconfiguration of the mail client programs. This is realized by employing a low-level network filtering driver that is able to intercept all communication streams and divert them to the avast! mail scanner.

In previous versions of avast!, users could use so-called Mail Protection Wizard - an easy application that helped them to set up their mail clients to use avast without the need of reconfiguration of the account details. The Mail Protection Wizard is now deprecated (except for Windows 9x/ME based systems where the transparent mail scanning feature is not available).

New language packs

Commitment to internationalization is one of the key benefits of avast!. During the last 2 years, avast! has been translated to a number of languages and version 4.5 adds additional language modules. To date, the following language versions are provided: English, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Turkish.

TCP scanning daemon

The Professional and Server Editions now include a special TCP scanning daemon used previously solely in the Linux/Unix version of avast!. The daemon is a simple TCP listener (listening on a known TCP port) that accepts and processes certain commands. These commands include SCAN to scan a specific file or directory.

The protocol used by the TCP scanning daemon is well-documented and can therefore be easily used to integrate the engine with a number of external applications. Most of the time, interaction with an AV software is realized by launching a command-line scanner; while this is a convenient solution for demonstatration purposes, in real-world scenarios this aproach has severe limitations (such as very low performance). Use of the TCP daemon is not only easy to use from virtually any environment (including languages like Java and Perl) but also features very high throughput.

[big_gie]

This looks really cool!
Thanks m8!

[scarecrow]

It works just great... using the free Home Edition which autoupdated quietly and transparently (after reboot). Definitely a star between Antivirus utilities.

[Laz]

The BEST just keeps getting better!

After many loyal years to F-Secure Workstation on my main system I am about to switch to avast! on my new HD for that. Been using avast! on all other systems for a long time now of course. And for most first time users of this fine soft do not even think about getting the Pro version as FREE version is more than enough for most users.

[woody]

Yep...the scanning engine has improved.I was surfing the web the other day.One site I went to had six viruses on it.Avast warned immediately,was able to remove all before any damage had been done.Previously,warnings were only issued during a scan,or certain files accessed,and viruses were already in place.