Author Topic: What's causing so many emergency updates?  (Read 16586 times)

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cooby

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What's causing so many emergency updates?
« on: November 13, 2012, 02:41:17 AM »
Since November 9, emergency updates are piling up. 36 total of which 24 today. It used to be one every few days. Can someone explain?

Offline SugarD-x

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2012, 03:49:18 AM »
Since November 9, emergency updates are piling up. 36 total of which 24 today. It used to be one every few days. Can someone explain?
Your Avast! sounds like it's very outdated. Have you tried running the update processes to make sure you're on the latest version?
~SugarD-x~

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #2 on: November 13, 2012, 11:40:46 AM »
How do you know its emergency updates? Those are only fired up when something goes wrong globally. To me it seems like you're describing Streaming Updates, those that are received several times a day...
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true indian

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #3 on: November 13, 2012, 11:43:39 AM »
Malware Writers are getting more active and responsive to avast! protection  ;D

thats why more streaming updates..

Offline Pondus

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #4 on: November 13, 2012, 12:50:00 PM »
Cybersecurity: A Global Economic
Security Crisis


Quote
The mainstream threat has matured and one cybersecurity company stated that in 2011, it was finding up to 150,000 new pieces of malicious code daily. That figure is double what was seen daily in 2010 (75,000 daily), which is also double what was observed in 2009 (approximately 37,500 daily). The troublesome fact about the growth of malware is that both the quantity and the quality have drastically increased. The vast proliferation of malware has facilitated a much broader probing of the Internet, leading some bad actors to realize there is an immense number of interesting targets that might have been ignored five years ago
http://www.growthconsulting.frost.com/web/images.nsf/0/B1A9AEA0488DE48A802579B3005B0190/$File/GIL12_fs.htm

thats why.  ;)



Online DavidR

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #5 on: November 13, 2012, 03:00:43 PM »
Since November 9, emergency updates are piling up. 36 total of which 24 today. It used to be one every few days. Can someone explain?

They aren't emergency updates, they are streaming updates, check the avast defs sub-folder and you will see the streaming folder.

The Emergency Update Check is a scheduled task and it happens twice a day. It would also be initiated if you did a manual update.

The streaming update folder is removed when the next regular auto update happens as that also contains the previous streaming updates. So they shouldn't keep accumulating (piling up as you say).
« Last Edit: November 13, 2012, 03:02:32 PM by DavidR »
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Offline mchain

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #6 on: November 13, 2012, 05:05:38 PM »
hi cooby,

To give you an idea of what Avast! is doing when you surf the net, here is a website reporting in real-time malicious attacks on computers worldwide:  http://map.honeynet.org

This mapsite uses honeypots to catch the bad guys in the act of infecting a system.  A part of the streaming updates information Avast! provides is based on what these honeypots see and collect.  As this is real-time information, streaming updates are now necessary to provide the protection you need to stay safe.  Two to three core updates a day are not sufficient to protect you anymore.

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user_1000

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #7 on: November 13, 2012, 07:58:30 PM »
How do you know its emergency updates? Those are only fired up when something goes wrong globally. To me it seems like you're describing Streaming Updates, those that are received several times a day...

By the way, you can see that there has been a some emergency updates applied once in a while.

C:\ProgramData\AVAST Software\Avast\AvastEmUpdate.ini

AvastEmUpdate.ini:
Code: [Select]
[Config]
LastAppliedPatchId=104

Online DavidR

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #8 on: November 13, 2012, 10:02:02 PM »
Personally I don't believe that there have been 104 emergency updates, they are designed to overcome a problem whereby you can't actually use the regular update process. The emergency update has been said to be a very rare/unusual occurrence and one no doubt we would see topics about in the forums.

So I don't know if this is just an ID assigned to checking rather than an emergency update as such. I believe that if there were an emergency update the user is likely to know it has happened (as they are likely to have been having update/serious problems recently). There is also a likelihood that after the emergency update you may be asked to reboot.
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Dch48

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #9 on: November 13, 2012, 10:13:34 PM »
I am not aware of having received any Emergency updates since they implemented the feature.

cooby

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #10 on: November 13, 2012, 10:31:31 PM »
Since November 9, emergency updates are piling up. 36 total of which 24 today. It used to be one every few days. Can someone explain?

They aren't emergency updates, they are streaming updates, check the avast defs sub-folder and you will see the streaming folder.

The Emergency Update Check is a scheduled task and it happens twice a day. It would also be initiated if you did a manual update.

The streaming update folder is removed when the next regular auto update happens as that also contains the previous streaming updates. So they shouldn't keep accumulating (piling up as you say).

@DavidR, RejZoR,
Aha, indeed, defs subfolder says streaming, a ton of them yesterday 30+. Today 1 or 2 files in -stream directory.
Why did I say emergency updates? see attached firewall log, it never lies, clearly the application indicates emergency update.

« Last Edit: November 13, 2012, 10:58:06 PM by cooby »

Offline mchain

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #11 on: November 13, 2012, 11:14:13 PM »
Sunbelt Firewall is not one I have ever used, so did not know about the terminology.  Learn something new everyday.
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Online DavidR

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #12 on: November 13, 2012, 11:49:55 PM »
@    cooby
I see lots of outbound connections for AvastEmUpdate.exe in your image, but no inbound connection, an impossibility to update anything if there is nothing coming back in.

I haven't got a clue why you have so many connections for the AvastEmUpdate.exe, I only see one entry for today in my firewall.
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Offline RejZoR

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #13 on: November 14, 2012, 12:02:29 AM »
These two things are completely unrelated. You get streaming updates by the standard auto updater. The Emergency Updater is just checking periodically as a stand alone app for updates that are issued under emergency priority. You can also see that from the FW logs. Only outbound connections and no inbound transfers. Meaning you're not getting the streaming updates in those folders from the Emergency Updater component.

What does this mean?

Regular updates are controlled by the avast! app itself. The Emergency Updater is a completely stand alone app which can resurrect avast! in case if some really nasty bug sneaks into a new program update release and you can't use avast! anymore to update it. That's where Emergency Updater kicks in. avast! team issues an emergency program update on a separate servers which are checked by the Emergency Updater component. This updater will find there is a new update and will try to update avast! forcibly.

It's very unlikely for such scenario but not impossible. That's why they introduced this feature not that long ago.
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Offline Charyb-0

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Re: What's causing so many emergency updates?
« Reply #14 on: November 14, 2012, 02:33:53 AM »
The streaming update files are associated with VLC media player. I have no idea if this could be a cause of this or not but wouldn't avast see this as a problem?