avast crashing epic games launcher

[lunatic987]

Seems this is actually a known thing, but only just recently started happening to me. Avast is interfering with chromium within the launcher, causing an array to be larger than expected.

Why in the hell is Avast modifying the traffic between the Launcher and the Server?

[Asyn]

- Which Avast..? (Free/Pro/IS/Premium)
- Which version/build of Avast..?
- OS..? (32/64 Bit..? - which SP/Build..?)
- Other security related software installed..?
- Which AV(s) did you use before Avast..?

[lunatic987]

Free, where I posted it.
20.5.2415(build 20.5.5410.561

Win10 64
Version 1909

Apart from forced windows updates, no related software.

I have been using avast for a long time, and is the only antivirus that has been used on this specific computer and windows install.

I've about had it with Avast at this point. I shouldn't need to disable it to launch something, it should not be interferring with mail traffic when I didn't even install mail shield but that too is a known thing. It also shouldn't be intercepting/modifying internet traffic, only blocking certain trouble websites, as it says.

[Asyn]

-> https://support.avast.com/article/Antivirus-scan-exclusions

[lunatic987]

I only just looked here again.

Just to be blunt, I shouldn't have to exclude folders, and don't need an article to walk me through it. There was more to the issue, but avast appeared to be what started it all, by interfering with it via the chromium used within one way or another. Things I explicitly chose to not have occur.

And excluding the folder wouldn't stop part of that, and shouldn't be needed. As soon as avast reaches a threshold to annoy me more than the hassle of selecting an alternative, I'll toss it. Which, one more sneaky trick like installing aspects I chose to not install or removed, or if caught gathering information it shouldn't be, will be that threshold.

don't bother replying

[Asyn]

You can submit your feedback in "About Avast".

[igor]

Where exactly is this a "known thing"? Any technical details about this "array modification"?
Thanks.

[lunatic987]

known in that many people have reported this.

It was caused by the Web Shield. No, it was not Mail Shield, although that was forcibly installed on me in an update despite explicitly disabling that option at install.
I'm assuming the issue with Epic Launcher was caused kind of like how it would make a mess of every email I replied to in gmail. I forcibly use the old gmail view and not the 'Standard View'. But every email I would reply to would get the following:
{
<div
id="DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2"><br />
<table style="border-top: 1px solid #D3D4DE;">
        <tr>
        <td style="width: 55px; padding-top: 13px;"><a
href="https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail&utm_term=icon"
target="_blank"><img
src="https://ipmcdn.avast.com/images/icons/icon-envelope-tick-round-orange-animated-no-repeat-v1.gif"
alt="" width="46" height="29" style="width: 46px; height: 29px;"
/></a></td>
                <td style="width: 470px; padding-top: 12px; color: #41424e;
font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
line-height: 18px;">Virus-free. <a
href="https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=webmail&utm_term=link"
target="_blank" style="color: #4453ea;">www.avast.com</a>
                </td>
        </tr>
</table><a href="#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2" width="1"
height="1"></a></div>
}

That looks like crap, a complete mess of an email. Not something that is fun on an email of importance.

I'm not going to bother with packet sniffing to identify precisely what was going on and how it went about it. I didn't have time when the issue was apparent and I took steps to prevent it happening and have no desire to facilitate it happening again after I identified the specific issue, which was that by Avast messing with the Web Traffic and it's propensity for adding to the html, it made it bigger than the client expected, overrunning the array used to parse the text in Epic Launcher, because why would the launcher receive html larger than it was sent?

Maybe think before injecting code next time.