Consumer Products > Avast Mac Security

Messages Application on Mac

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F0urq:
I sent this report in via email as well, but I will copy+paste the email I sent into this thread also:

Hello Avast Team,

I am a fellow IT Helpdesk Technician here with a bug to report to you guys regarding Avast Free Edition on Macintosh Systems. On my own personal computer, Avast at certain times will block the Message app from communicating with Apple Servers for authentication, thus not allowing the user to send/receive texts through Messages and presenting me with an “authentication failure” message. This issue has been replicated on several different Mac computers and will happen at random times.

The workaround currently for this issue is to disable all of the Avast shields, and log back in to the Messages App with your iCloud account which will then fix the issue in the Messages App. Once that is done, you can re-enable the shields on Avast until the problem presents itself again.

Somehow and sometimes the Avast shields are blocking communication between the Messages Application and Apple’s authentication servers for iCloud.

Please take a look at this bug and see what you can do.

ondrej.kolacek:
Hello,

thanks for reporting this issue. By default we only intercept HTTPS connections originating from browsers, so it is weird that this is happening.

-please check in GUI, Preferences, Shields, Settings in WebShield section, Scan secured connections from browsers only. Do you have the the option selected? Unselecting it breaks stuff; we will be getting rid of this option in the near future
-Have you tested that it is not enough to turn off web shield and you need to turn off all shields, or you are doing it "just in case"?
-Please could you send a support package (Help->Avast Technical Support -> Generate support package, note there that it is from you) after the issue happens?
-If you go to Messages' Preferences, Accounts, select your account with Apple ID, sign out, and log in to the account again, does it work correctly with Avast active?

We will try to reproduce this here, but if it fails, any information helps.

Kind regards,
Ondrej Kolacek

F0urq:
Hello ondrej.kolacek,

Thanks for the reply! Here are some answers to your questions

1. The option for "Scan secured connections from browsers only" was not checked, only the "Scan secured connections" was. I have since checked both now. What exactly does this option do?
2. When fixing the problem, I have disabled all shields in order to rectify the issue. I have not tried disabling one shield at a time.
3. Since I have just replicated the issue, I have submitted a support package
4. This step where you had me sign out of my account on Messages replicated the issue. Once signed out, I am unable to sign back in to iMessage. After I received this error, I disabled all shields on Avast and was still unable to sign back in. Thus with all shields still disabled, I restarted my system and then after i launched messages again was I able to re-login. Once done, I re-enabled the shields in Avast.

Attached is a photo of the error message that comes up in Messages

ondrej.kolacek:
Hello,

the problem will most likely be the unchecked option. The checkbox probably should not have been introduced at all and in our new not so soon to be released gui we have gotten rid of it. Basically many applications can not cope with us intercepting https traffic; because of that we have switched to default of intercepting https only originating from web browsers quite a long time ago. But to keep the legacy behavior, the checkbox has been introduced that time. Unfortunately over the time using the checkbox started to be worse and worse idea. We will get rid of the checkbox in next release which will be released quite soon, as a priority.

Thanks for informing us about the issue.

Kind regards,
Ondrej Kolacek

F0urq:

--- Quote from: ondrej.kolacek on July 10, 2018, 09:26:58 AM ---Hello,

the problem will most likely be the unchecked option. The checkbox probably should not have been introduced at all and in our new not so soon to be released gui we have gotten rid of it. Basically many applications can not cope with us intercepting https traffic; because of that we have switched to default of intercepting https only originating from web browsers quite a long time ago. But to keep the legacy behavior, the checkbox has been introduced that time. Unfortunately over the time using the checkbox started to be worse and worse idea. We will get rid of the checkbox in next release which will be released quite soon, as a priority.

Thanks for informing us about the issue.

Kind regards,
Ondrej Kolacek

--- End quote ---

I actually attempted to see if the problem would still exist after unchecking both boxes and then re-checking both boxes. In both instances, the problem was still there hence I dont think they are related to the problem thats happening.

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