usenet header download

[REDACTED]

Starting a week or so ago, I've been having issues downloading usenet headers in my newsreader (newsbin or agent). If I turn off all the shields the headers download fine. I've told avast to ignore newsbin everywhere I know of, but I must be missing something, as I still need to turn off shields to get things to work. Is there a list of things to set so that I don't have to do this?

[DavidR]

Are you getting any errors displayed ?

What avast version do you have (17.2.2288 being the latest) ?

You shouldn't need to disable all shields, the avast Mail Shield handles email and usenet.

[REDACTED]

I get a timeout getting the headers. If I disable XFeatures in the usenet reader I can download headers (slowly) or I can disable Avast (which is much faster). I have the latest Avast.

[DavidR]

Disabling avast leaves you completely unprotected, this is why I suggested disabling the mail shield as a minimal step and to see if that worked.

That said, since you are only downloading the headers, I don't know if the program you use for that (?) is actually using NNTP protocol.

I wonder if you can add the usenet reader (executable file and path) to the avast Exclusions. However, as you say you "told avast to ignore newsbin everywhere I know of" and those exclusions might exclude scanning the file, but not its actions.

[REDACTED]

Under exclusions I added the folder for the program as well as the folder under AppData where the headers are going. I have the program executable added under the hardened mode. I have the same folders added under the File System shield exclusions. I have the data folder added under the behavior shield exclusions. I have the executable added under the web shield exclusions.

[DavidR]

Unfortunately that doesn't work, all you would be doing is stopping avast scan those files, what it doesn't do is stop avast scanning its actions.

If you look in the web shield settings exceptions you will see a section Processes to exclude. This actually excludes that processes activity, unfortunately there is no Processes to exclude option. The problem being the web shield isn't what is scanning NNTP traffic, that is down to the Mail Shield as I mentioned before.

Ordinarily the mail shield would throw up an error if there was an issue, commonly that would be exceeding the default number of concurrent connections. But that isn't happening, so I at a loss as to what else to suggest.

It has been a very long time since I used Usenet over 10 years, so I have very little current personal experience.

[REDACTED]

I tried turning off NNTP scanning, and turning off just the mail shield, but neither fixed the problem. So, I have to turn off everything for some reason.

[DavidR]

Whilst there is no direct mention of NNTP/Usenet in the change log of the recently released 17.3.2290 version of avast, I would suggest you update to the latest program version and check.

[Karl66]

I can confirm the latest Avast interferes with my Usenet downloads as well. I had been downloading without incident up until late evening yesterday, then at some point Avast auto-updated (though it didn't restart my PC), and suddenly all Usenet downloads just stopped. Restarting my downloader (NZBGet), rebooting the computer, nothing helped.

Then I remembered I'd been using secure downloading with SSL, and my downloader was configured to use a SSL cipher called "RC4-MD5". So in NZBGet I removed the RC4-MD5 selection (which would let the SSL library auto-negotiate a compatible cipher with the server) and restarted it, and my downloads suddenly resumed.

Now, I didn't know that Avast could be to blame until I found this thread. With Avast Mail Shield set to scan NNTP, I re-enabled RC4-MD5 in NZBGet and restarted, and downloads hung. Then I disabled NNTP scans in Avast, restarted my NZBGet again, and it's working once more.

So clearly something in the Avast update is interfering with NNTP, specifically the RC4-MD5 cipher in SSL.

[DavidR]

The strange thing is your disabling NNTP and it works, but poobah2, tried that.

I tried turning off NNTP scanning, and turning off just the mail shield, but neither fixed the problem. So, I have to turn off everything for some reason.

And it didn't resolve it, I hate mysteries.

[REDACTED]

I noticed this problem a while ago, and it went away when in Mail Settings I unticked "Scan Newsgroup Messages NNTP".
But the problem came back
If I disable XFeatures at the server level, which removes the compression, headers can be downloaded.
But it takes a very long time and more space.
So the problem seems to be with Avast blocking access to compressed headers, which we can only resolve by disabling all shields.
Please fix this problem.