Boot time scan on Mac

[marc.garcia.marti]

Hello everyone,

long time  Windows user here. My Mac was acting up and I decided to give Avast a try. I wanted to scan the system during boot time but I just can't find how. I've found an article on this: https://voyagernowfrance.hatenablog.com/entry/2019/01/11/012944 but I can't find the option in the current interface.

Anybody?

[ondrej.kolacek]

Hello,

the article is bogus, as you can see, the GUI is from Avast for Windows. Avast for Mac does not have boot time scan.

On Windows it used to be very common for all to run as Administrator; thus malware, if run, could register into the system to be started before the Fileshield starts and hide itself from the AV. Because of this, hacks (which boot scan is) were used to (hopefully) ensure that a scan is run before viruses can start and hide themselves from the scanner.

On Mac OS, there is a clear divide between user and root processes. Fileshield on Mac starts before the first user process starts and thus scans them all. Even if initially virus is not detected, it would still have to cross the user->root barrier to hide. Because of this, it has been deemed sufficient to only support normal scans.

Kind Regards,
Ondrej Kolacek