Avast WEBforum

Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: true indian on December 06, 2012, 03:08:02 PM

Title: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: true indian on December 06, 2012, 03:08:02 PM
Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast

Parts of Outpost firewall and protocol parsing technologies are embedded into Avast’s comprehensive Internet Security solution

St. Petersburg, Russia — December 6, 2012. Agnitum, the PC security expert and manufacturer of the Outpost range of security products, is glad to announce a licensing contract with a prominent antivirus vendor Avast Software. Avast now takes advantage of Outpost’s best-of-breed firewall technology for the purpose of its all-in-one security product.

AVAST logoAgnitum’s technology now available to the licensee involves personal firewall, attack detection, parsing of HTTP as well as POP3, SMTP and IMAP protocols.

Given the complexity and diversity of today’s threats, users need protection that controls the main propagation route — their Internet connection. Zero-day threats, one of the newest and most difficult to detect, are becoming more frequent, and an appropriate response must be in place for users to have adequate security when they go online.

Agnitum is one the leading technology licensors in the security industry. Its technologies are being currently employed by top market players. The company has provided flexible opportunities for third-party licensing, offering antivirus, firewall or proactive protection modules either as a rebranded solution or based on the SDK since the year 2000. Among the major benefits offered by Agnitum’s licensing program are best-of-breed preventive mechanisms, native compatibility with both 32- and 64-bit Windows, reduced time-to-market, and smooth operation of the technology core in a third-party environment.

AVAST Software, the makers of avast! Antivirus, protects over 170 million users around the world, and has integrated Outpost’s firewall and content filtering technology into its all-in-one Internet security solution.

"Agnitum’s personal firewall technology has long been the standard by which others are judged, and we are pleased to be able to enhance our users’ Internet security protection with this proven solution", comments Ondrej Vlcek, CTO at Avast.
About Agnitum

Founded in 1999, Agnitum Ltd. (http://www.agnitum.com) has been committed to delivering and supporting high-quality, easy to use security software for over a decade. Agnitum’s commercial solutions for the home market are Outpost Firewall Pro and Outpost Antivirus Pro, securing personal and family computers; and Outpost Security Suite — an all-in-one Internet security solution. Dedicated to global e-security, Agnitum also offers free versions of Outpost Firewall and Outpost Security Suite to secure users’ system, network connections and critical data. Outpost Network Security ensures centrally-manageable endpoint protection and reliable performance for SMBs, and Outpost Antivirus Service provides antivirus protection via monthly subscription to 150,000 ISP subscribers.

For more information and to request review copies of Outpost Pro, please contact:

Agnitum International PR
http://www.agnitum.com/news/2012-12-06-agnitum-firewall-technology-avast.php

Good News for Avast users! One of the best firewalls!  ;D ;D
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: CraigB on December 06, 2012, 03:17:30 PM
Probably why there's been so much silence about the up-coming avast 8, this might all be incorporated into the new version ???
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: YLAP on December 06, 2012, 04:06:12 PM
Very interesting news indeed...  8)
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: warlock on December 06, 2012, 04:18:19 PM
Let's hope that makes the firewall more usable. I especially hope they changed the fw rule storage file format, because the current XML gets corrupted too often for my liking, especially when one configures some custom rules. That's my biggest pet-peeve about AIS, closely followed by the stupid overcomplicated application rules UI.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: DavidR on December 06, 2012, 04:21:24 PM
Yes, very interesting as I have had Outpost in various versions from the Outpost free v1.0 through to the latest regular release of Outpost Firewall Pro. So I have had the outpost firewall for even longer than avast (eight and a half years), but I can't remember exactly when I got outpost free v1.0.

From the very early days of Outpost firewall I have recognised it as a very good firewall offering the same kind of configuration and flexibility as I subsequently found in avast antivirus.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Charyb-0 on December 06, 2012, 05:43:01 PM
This is a great choice in firewalls and users will be pleased by this. I wonder how much of the technology will be used? I'm ready to see the final product.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: schmidthouse on December 06, 2012, 06:26:25 PM
This has all been very quiet. :-X
I don't think any Secret Service could keep stuff like this quiet. ;D
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: vikz_89 on December 06, 2012, 06:28:12 PM
First of Congratulations Avast, will really be looking forward to the Avast! 8.0 release.

Hope that Avast! will incorporate some of the technology in Zero Day Prevention into their Behavior Shield, making their Behavior Shield a little bit more User-Interactive and more active in fighting Zero Day Malware.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: LunarWolf on December 06, 2012, 07:19:18 PM
First, I actually don't think is a good idea.

Licensing = a chunk of avast revenue is given to another company which can be used to come up with new technologies although Outpost is a good firewall.

Second, I thought avast was always about home grown technology? How is it suddenly they are switching to other people's technology? Is avast engineer s unable to come up with good firewall until avast have to incorporate another's company product?

Sorry for the harsh words. But it just don't feel right for me for avast to incorporate another company's technology.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: CraigB on December 06, 2012, 07:40:28 PM
First, I actually don't think is a good idea.

Licensing = a chunk of avast revenue is given to another company which can be used to come up with new technologies although Outpost is a good firewall.

Second, I thought avast was always about home grown technology? How is it suddenly they are switching to other people's technology? Is avast engineer s unable to come up with good firewall until avast have to incorporate another's company product?

Sorry for the harsh words. But it just don't feel right for me for avast to incorporate another company's technology.
Best thing in the world that they could have done imo, Agnitum is at the top of there field in firewall technology and avast can only benefit from this in making there AIS version more secure and usable, will be very interesting to see the end result.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: JuninhoSlo on December 06, 2012, 07:52:15 PM
Agnitum shouldn,t announce this news. It,s supposed to be a secret until Avast 8 (AIS8) came out. Otherwise this is a great news and I,m really looking forward to see Avast Internet Security8.

Thank you.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: schmidthouse on December 06, 2012, 07:58:51 PM
First, I actually don't think is a good idea.

Licensing = a chunk of avast revenue is given to another company which can be used to come up with new technologies although Outpost is a good firewall.

Second, I thought avast was always about home grown technology? How is it suddenly they are switching to other people's technology? Is avast engineer s unable to come up with good firewall until avast have to incorporate another's company product?

Sorry for the harsh words. But it just don't feel right for me for avast to incorporate another company's technology.

It's ALWAYS got to be about the "most secure security software" for the user not who developed the technology first.
As long as all involved are working from a position of integrity and trust, we all win  IMHO ;) :)

Edit
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: LunarWolf on December 06, 2012, 08:05:35 PM
What about the addition resources for the technology? Isn't it kind of wasted and avast users are mostly free users. If avast is a paid AV, it will be a totally different story. They will have plenty of money to splash.

Now, for avast to license hitmanpro/emisoft/malwarebytes cleaning abilities.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: zfactor on December 06, 2012, 08:11:20 PM
i think it could be good and bad, outpost is one of the best there is but has grown heavier is recent years, avast internet security is one of the lightest suite i use and feels that way, other products that also use the outpost firewall have become heavier and imo more sluggish. i just hope this doesnt happen to avast is. its very light and i hope they can keep it that way. me personally i liked the firewall they has especially for my average client it was easy to use and had great simple app control. you want to block something simply go and block it. where as outpost itself can tend to overwhelm some at times.

i like the fact of having a better firewal and i hope it helps detection etc but please keep it light and please do not over complicate for the average user like many suites do now as some have little to no basic app control or if they do its hard imo for a normal user to use them. we will have to see how this all goes.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: schmidthouse on December 06, 2012, 08:18:53 PM
What about the addition resources for the technology? Isn't it kind of wasted and avast users are mostly free users. If avast is a paid AV, it will be a totally different story. They will have plenty of money to splash.

Now, for avast to license hitmanpro/emisoft/malwarebytes cleaning abilities.

AIS has always been a paid for Security Suite.
The firewall technology I assume would be used to enhance/improve the firewall in the paid suite.
Only Avast Free is free the others you pay for, :)
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Lisandro on December 06, 2012, 08:27:44 PM
Agnitum shouldn,t announce this news. It,s supposed to be a secret until Avast 8 (AIS8) came out.
How did you know this?

Hope this improve the firewall part of the suite and for sure it will. Userfriendly + advanced options, mobile network management (tethering).
Of course, the security improvement is welcome also (behavior shield).
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Charyb-0 on December 06, 2012, 08:30:08 PM
I didn't read where it included proactive protection. I guess we will have to wait and see.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: DavidR on December 06, 2012, 09:30:19 PM
i think it could be good and bad, outpost is one of the best there is but has grown heavier is recent years, avast internet security is one of the lightest suite i use and feels that way, other products that also use the outpost firewall have become heavier and imo more sluggish.
<snip>

I don't know where you get this from as it isn't my experience, I have been using it from way back as outpost free v1.0 through to the latest regular release of Outpost Firewall Pro and have never felt it to be heavy.

Just a raw down and dirty example op_mon.exe the main process is only in the region of 21MB of RAM and I never see its cpu activity get particularly high.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Anarion on December 06, 2012, 10:00:20 PM
This is good. The current firewall honestly isn't comparable to the best solutions out there.

i think it could be good and bad, outpost is one of the best there is but has grown heavier is recent years, avast internet security is one of the lightest suite i use and feels that way, other products that also use the outpost firewall have become heavier and imo more sluggish.
<snip>

I don't know where you get this from as it isn't my experience, I have been using it from way back as outpost free v1.0 through to the latest regular release of Outpost Firewall Pro and have never felt it to be heavy.

Just a raw down and dirty example op_mon.exe the main process is only in the region of 21MB of RAM and I never see its cpu activity get particularly high.
I've never used OF myself so I don't really know how heavy it is. 21 MB may sound like a small amount but Comodo for example uses way less (D+ disable, firewall mode only).

(http://www.abload.de/img/cfz9uns.png)
Although, the antivirus is far from being as efficient as their firewall part when it comes to CPU usage. Good firewall but AV part.... Far from Avast.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: DavidR on December 06, 2012, 10:58:23 PM
Well 21MB is small when you consider it to other applications, my anti-spam is running at 103Mb, thunderbird at 166MB, firefox at 511MB (and that is only one of its entries, dropbox at 50MB.

So it rather depends on your perspective of heavy, but RAM is their to be used as that improves performance so it isn't constantly swapping out to the hard drive pagefile.sys. For me the main thing would be CPU activity (nowadays RAM is cheap and plentiful) and that is negligible.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: zfactor on December 07, 2012, 02:45:13 AM
has nothing to do with its ram usage or the space on the drive it takes up on the hdd. its the impact on some systems. it does tend to slow down some systems i have used it on.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: DavidR on December 07, 2012, 03:05:52 AM
As I said "For me the main thing would be CPU activity (nowadays RAM is cheap and plentiful) and that is negligible." so nothing to do with RAM or disk space, I have never had it slow my systems.

Whilst this XP Pro desktop system is of a reasonable spec, my win7 netbook is no racehorse and that doesn't suffer either.
Acer Aspire One, Win7 Starter (32bit), 2GB DDR3 RAM, Intel Atom N255 (1.5GHz dual core) CPU.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Asyn on December 07, 2012, 05:35:10 AM
Wonder, if we'll see the HIPS part..!? Well, time will tell... ;)
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: SpeedyPC on December 07, 2012, 06:07:22 AM
Wonder, if we'll see the HIPS part..!? Well, time will tell... ;)

If Avast added HIPS from Agnitum licenses firewall technology this would be good news, because it won't be as bad as hell when I've used Comodo FW from v3.14 right up to v5.5 it was a bloody nightmare and their HIPS was to heavy and over killed. I've bought a lifetime license for 3 PC's from Agnitum using Outpost Pro FW and their HIPS is far lighter than Comodo and it's easier to operate the FW if you understand what you're doing. Trust me Asyn you'll love it ;) and you can say good bye to you're old Comodo v3.14 FW in a trash can ;D

I congratulations to Avast for choosing Agnitum and not Comodo, I really be looking forward to see the Avast! 8.0 final release and feedback before I might get AIS on my new laptop well see as I'm happy with my lifetime license from Agnitum.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Asyn on December 07, 2012, 07:03:48 AM
Trust me Asyn you'll love it ;) and you can say good bye to you're old Comodo v3.14 FW in a trash can ;D

Let's see... ;D
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: CraigB on December 07, 2012, 07:17:55 AM
has nothing to do with its ram usage or the space on the drive it takes up on the hdd. its the impact on some systems. it does tend to slow down some systems i have used it on.
I've got it on two systems here and Outpost may add a couple of extra seconds to the boot time but once the system is up and running there is no reduced performance anyware.

Until the finished version is released all this speculation about performance issues is complete " Hoo Haa"  ;D
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: zfactor on December 07, 2012, 07:51:59 AM
performance aside ....just whatever avast does i REALLY HOPE they maintain the ease of use. i have this installed on a lot of systems for people like my mom and my aunt my mil, sister in law and MANY clients etc that HATE hips type pop ups and questions. please do not make it so it asks a million questions if the hips is integrated as these kind of average people will not know how to answer them. and these are almost all 3 year lic's they all have and they would remove it in a second if its anything even close to comodo type pop ups.

please keep it simple and IF a advanced user wants the pop ups allow them to enable them but they should be off by default. i have a LOT of clients who i installed ais for and i can honestly say this would be how more than probably 85% of them would feel. i would have no problem with them but i know how to answer them.

and PLEASE keep the basic app type control for the user who wants to simply block or allow an app without having to create rules etc.. and i agree i would MUCH rather outpost then comodo as said above
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: LunarWolf on December 07, 2012, 10:45:04 AM
I know AIS is paid but what I meant is for example the current price of AIS is US$49.99 without the discount. Avast will get 100% of the revenue. But due to the fact that they license OF, and have to pay say US$10 per AIS sold, then they will only be getting US$39.99.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: DavidR on December 07, 2012, 12:31:12 PM
Let avast worry about the costs, but I rather doubt the licensing fee will be that high per unit.

I have purchased Outpost Firewall Pro lifetime licenses at times over the years and they didn't cost me any more than an annual license for one and about 1.5 times when I purchased a 3 PC license.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: SpeedyPC on December 07, 2012, 01:03:08 PM
Let avast worry about the costs, but I rather doubt the licensing fee will be that high per unit.

I have purchased Outpost Firewall Pro lifetime licenses at times over the years and they didn't cost me any more than an annual license for one and about 1.5 times when I purchased a 3 PC license.

+1 Same as me as well as I've bought a lifetime licenses for 3 PC, and I agree let avast worry about the costs.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: true indian on December 07, 2012, 02:08:22 PM
LunarWolf,you can see on Agnitum page even AVG and many more vendors are in contract with them.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: essexboy on December 07, 2012, 03:41:52 PM
I think this is a good idea using proven technologies in a field where Avast is still learning.. Good move
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: hayc59 on December 07, 2012, 05:45:54 PM
Right on avast! to great powers running as one
should be real NICE!!
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: true indian on December 08, 2012, 10:08:00 AM
First of Congratulations Avast, will really be looking forward to the Avast! 8.0 release.

Hope that Avast! will incorporate some of the technology in Zero Day Prevention into their Behavior Shield, making their Behavior Shield a little bit more User-Interactive and more active in fighting Zero Day Malware.

Avast is already on top with 0-day threats!? :
http://www.shadowserver.org/wiki/pmwiki.php/AV/Virus60-DayStats
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Hard_ROCKER on December 08, 2012, 10:50:16 AM
Personally i welcome the news, Outpost is a great fw. I am also one of those that are wondering about the HIPS part, will that get ported over to AIS as well ? That would be nice.

@true indian: No it's not on top and it never was, it's quite average at detection and quite bad at removal(unfortunately). Those tests that you link aren't really tests but more like statistics. Read more here:

Kevin Townsend article:
http://kevtownsend.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/shadowservers-new-anti-virus-test-suite-%E2%80%93-how-good-is-it/

David Harley(ESET senior research fellow) article:
http://www.scmagazine.com/shadow-boxing/article/211381/

Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: RejZoR on December 08, 2012, 10:53:09 AM
Yes, but still. If the Auto Sandbox would actually incorporate more identification behavior rules to identify malware behavior and same for the Behavior Shield, it would skyrocket far ahead of the rest. I'm sure of that and i know avast! team is capable of doing that but they just don't seem tow ant to make next steep. Not really sure why.

They should add and option for it and keep it disabled by default. So enthusiasts can use it and avast! would collect data from it to build the behavior analysis even further. Or something, i don't know...
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Hard_ROCKER on December 08, 2012, 11:17:07 AM
Would be really nice if we could get some developer input in this thread.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: RejZoR on December 08, 2012, 11:35:07 AM
Which is very unlikely since i haven't seen anyone around here for like ages. They only seem to reply to BSOD threads for the last half a year or so and thats it. Not cool...
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Tetsuo on December 08, 2012, 01:02:44 PM
OK, seems like we have to start a  'Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast BSOD' thread :D
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Defence on December 11, 2012, 12:14:47 AM
I use avast home and comodo firewall, outpost is the best than comodo?
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Dch48 on December 11, 2012, 02:15:30 AM
I'm not sure this is good news. I like Avast''s firewall the way it is more than any one I have ever used. The only thing missing from it is a way to automatically purge old obsolete rules. I absolutely hope that the AIS firewall remains as silent as it is and only prompts for new connections when set on Ask. I most definitely would be against the addition of any HIPS or HIPS-like nonsense.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Dch48 on December 11, 2012, 02:18:51 AM
Wonder, if we'll see the HIPS part..!? Well, time will tell... ;)
Please God no, no HIPS garbage.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: CraigB on December 11, 2012, 03:49:55 AM
Wonder, if we'll see the HIPS part..!? Well, time will tell... ;)
Please God no, no HIPS garbage.
I disagree, Hips are an essential part of any top firewall and if put into learning mode for a couple of days when first installed you'll really not here from it, the Outpost hips are extremely intelligent, I only had one query on my system about the flight sim that it didn't know.

If someone is that against hips then that feature can always be disabled, you aren't forced to use it but you can benefit from it :)
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: SpeedyPC on December 11, 2012, 03:55:16 AM
Wonder, if we'll see the HIPS part..!? Well, time will tell... ;)
Please God no, no HIPS garbage.

If Avast include HIPS technology only from Agnitum because it far lighter than Comodo, Comobo HIPS is far to heavy and over killed with to many pop-up problems than Agnitum Outpost FW Dch48 tell me the truth have you tried Agnitum Outpost Pro FW. I know you had a lot of problems with Comodo HIPS when you're trying to play a computer game you were having a lot trouble, I have 14 computer games and they all worked behind the Agnitum Outpost HIPS 100% perfect with only 1 pop-up message per game and save it to allow all activity and you're done no more pop-up message.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Dch48 on December 11, 2012, 06:16:15 AM
Wonder, if we'll see the HIPS part..!? Well, time will tell... ;)
Please God no, no HIPS garbage.

If Avast include HIPS technology only from Agnitum because it far lighter than Comodo, Comobo HIPS is far to heavy and over killed with to many pop-up problems than Agnitum Outpost FW Dch48 tell me the truth have you tried Agnitum Outpost Pro FW. I know you had a lot of problems with Comodo HIPS when you're trying to play a computer game you were having a lot trouble, I have 14 computer games and they all worked behind the Agnitum Outpost HIPS 100% perfect with only 1 pop-up message per game and save it to allow all activity and you're done no more pop-up message.
I did try the free Outpost FW back when I was still using the XP machine extensively. I had problems with it but to be honest I can't remember what they were. It may have been the one that froze my machine completely when I turned the HIPS off.

Okay I found my post from back when I was trying the various free firewalls and had problems with all of them except Comodo.
Quote
I tried the free Outpost version with Avast! and had problems with total lockups on first access of a program when both Avast! and the HIPS component of Outpost were active. Disabling Avast! and letting Outpost create it's rules for the app in question, then turning Avast! back on eliminated further problems. It only happened with a couple of apps and I think one of them was uTorrent. I don't remember exactly because I had the same problem with PcTools and Online Armor but with different apps having the problem for each one of the three. I don't think Avast! likes to run alongside HIPS, at least not on my system. It's just one of the reasons why I have abandoned using any form of HIPS. I just don't want to deal with it any more.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Hard_ROCKER on December 11, 2012, 03:50:12 PM
Best FW&HIPS i have ever used personally is in what i am using on my main machine right now, Kaspersky IS 2013. Auto-rules cleanup, silent fw and hips and i mean truly silent. In 4 months of usage i have yet to see a pop-up and i have plenty of software installed over here. So out of the box it's incredibly easy to use, not even set and forget it's more like install and forget. No auto-learn mode, rules are for the most part  recieved from the cloud. Of course the advanced user can simply turn off all the automatic decision making if he/she so desires. If Kaspersky can make it so silent then so could avast!, i am sure of it.   :)


http://me.kaspersky.com/en/images/hips_whitepaper-55-75828.pdf
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: schmidthouse on December 11, 2012, 05:01:45 PM
It's anybody's guess what/how Avast will apply the technology but I also have used OPFW Pro on both XP and now on Windows8 and do not feel bothered or overwhelmed with "so called pop-ups".
The Firewall has been excellent. ;) 8)
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: DavidR on December 11, 2012, 07:59:51 PM
To some degree it also depends on what OS being used and what settings the user has in Outpost:

I get more pop-ups on my XP pro system than on my win7 netbook and that is for the same program installations and updates, etc. All this despite having the same Outpost settings and customisations. Not that the greater number of pop-ups on the XP system, I still don't find them particularly intrusive.

Outpost also has the Simple interface in which the HIPS would probably be even less intrusive, so there are many things which avast can decide how to implement this licensing. Given that the avast firewall was specifically designed to keep user input requirement to a minimum, so I guess they would be looking at the same policy when integrating the Outpost license.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: schmidthouse on December 11, 2012, 08:09:30 PM
To some degree it also depends on what OS being used and what settings the user has in Outpost:

I get more pop-ups on my XP pro system than on my win7 netbook and that is for the same program installations and updates, etc. All this despite having the same Outpost settings and customisations. Not that the greater number of pop-ups on the XP system, I still don't find them particularly intrusive.

Outpost also has the Simple interface in which the HIPS would probably be even less intrusive, so there are many things which avast can decide how to implement this licensing. Given that the avast firewall was specifically designed to keep user input requirement to a minimum, so I guess they would be looking at the same policy when integrating the Outpost license.

Hi David.
The best of both worlds would be advisable, as with OPFW, the user can go with 'simple' mode or can initiate 'Advanced' mode for deeper/personal settings. 8)
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Anarion on December 11, 2012, 08:15:10 PM
If HIPS starts asking every about every thing you do, user will start to allow everything without really thinking. That's the problem with Comodo's approach (let alone it's heavy, their firewall part is really great and light though). What ever Avast plans to do, I hope that they do not include HIPS that as about every damn thing you do.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: DavidR on December 11, 2012, 09:05:11 PM
If HIPS starts asking every about every thing you do, user will start to allow everything without really thinking. That's the problem with Comodo's approach (let alone it's heavy, their firewall part is really great and light though). What ever Avast plans to do, I hope that they do not include HIPS that as about every damn thing you do.

The outpost firewall doesn't ask about everything even in advanced mode (which I have mine set to), that is what we have been talking about and since avast isn't licensing comodo but outpost, its HIPS is a totally moot point.

As I have said the current thinking on the current avast firewall is not to require user intervention where possible. I honestly can't see them changing this thinking.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: lukor on December 11, 2012, 09:52:39 PM
OK, seems like we have to start a  'Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast BSOD' thread :D


There is already a couple of threads here on the forum, which could have easily be titled as you suggest. Funnily these haven't spread that much of a general enjoyment here, especially among win8 users. 
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Lisandro on December 11, 2012, 10:29:31 PM
Lukas, any real news that you could disclose? ???
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: lukor on December 11, 2012, 10:33:05 PM
I guess I can disclose that the aswnet.sys driver running in 7.0.1474 is part of the "licenced" code we are talking about here.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Lisandro on December 11, 2012, 10:54:53 PM
Thanks... Seems that our imagination went far far away... features, GUI, HIPS and so on...
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: lukor on December 11, 2012, 11:00:54 PM
Thanks... Seems that our imagination went far far away... features, GUI, HIPS and so on...


and no Blue screens...
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Lisandro on December 11, 2012, 11:01:38 PM
and no Blue screens...
No, sure not.
avast! is running very stable with your patch. Thanks.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Tetsuo on December 12, 2012, 02:13:37 PM
OK, seems like we have to start a  'Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast BSOD' thread :D


There is already a couple of threads here on the forum, which could have easily be titled as you suggest. Funnily these haven't spread that much of a general enjoyment here, especially among win8 users.

Quote
I guess I can disclose that the aswnet.sys driver running in 7.0.1474 is part of the "licenced" code we are talking about here.

I guess this explains why some issues in Win8 related to the network drivers are taking so long to be properly solved...

Edit: details added
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Lisandro on December 12, 2012, 09:02:29 PM
I guess this explains why some issues in Win8 related to the network drivers are taking so long to be properly solved...
On contrary, I think this step make it easier and faster. But, of course, I could be wrong.
Title: Re: Agnitum licenses firewall technology to Avast
Post by: Tetsuo on December 12, 2012, 09:12:20 PM
On contrary, I think this step make it easier and faster. But, of course, I could be wrong.

Well, I meant those drivers being used in Avast (i.e. aswnet.sys) were not "created" directly by the Avast Team, so it'd be not so easy to fix issues independently and as quickly as possible.