System: Win7x86, Avast Free AV, Comodo Free FirewallSince upgrading from Avast 2014.4.0.2008 to 2014.4.0.2011 (and subsequently to 2014.4.0.2013) Avast is causing multiple Internet access attempts (maybe just pings) for URLs in files being processed by applications. Those access attempts then have to complete / timeout for the programs to complete their activity.
I have exhaustively tested this and proven that it is the Avast upgrades that have introduced this.
An example is LibreOffice's soffice.bin:
- With 2014.4.0.2008 (and earlier), when opening or saving a document that contains URLs, the firewall receives a single attempt to loopback from 127.0.0.1 (port no. varies) to 127.0.0.1:12080. If soffice.bin is blocked in the firewall it quickly times out. If soffice.bin is set to allow loopback it instantly succeeds.
- Since 2014.4.0.2011 an attempt to access every single URL in the document is made from the PC's IP (port no. varies) to the URL's IP on port 80. Having the firewall set up with soffice.bin as Blocked or Alllow Loopback does not effectively deal with the requests and so every single request has to timeout to enable soffice.bin to complete its activity.
In my case I have documents that contain tabular information with scores of URLs (as they are copies from certain web pages).
Of course, it would be possible to just allow soffice.bin to have Internet access. But I don't want to do this ( I don't like applications that really don't need Internet access be given such free rein and, in any event, it starts to look like a Denial Of Service attack outbound from my PC).
I can see no good reason for soffice.bin to really access all these URLs and, indeed, prior to 2014.4.0.2011, it didn't happen.
It seems to me that Avast, as it is scanning the document file being accessed by soffice.bin, is forcing all of the URLs in the document to be “tested” (or whatever). So:-
1. Why is Avast doing this?
2. Is there anything that can be done to revert to the previous behaviour (or at least stop the current behaviour)?
BTW, it is not just soffice.bin – the same change in behaviour being displayed by other applications since 2014.4.0.2011.