Author Topic: Improve on-access scan  (Read 3446 times)

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martosurf

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Improve on-access scan
« on: June 19, 2008, 07:37:44 PM »
Since this is not really a feature I choosed to post this here rather in wishlist thread, if it's wrong please move to the proper section.

I'm now a *very happy* Linux user, I got all the benefits of the most secure, releable, user oriented and free OS system in the world without any of the annoyances of a propietary, spyware OS like Windows - yes, spyware, it contains backdoors to USA NSA, a well known and documented fact.

However, as the rest of the family still uses Windows until they change their mind paradigm I still need a good anti-malware solution and of course which best option than avast!!?  ;D

So, may be I'm bad accostumed to Linux lighting fast speed to launch applications and do every task, but when I use Windows -while someone is using it's account- with avast! Standard Shield set to Normal well... I feel die, urrghh.

I remember back in time when I was a Kaspersky customer -didn't knew about avast! at that time- they launched their 5.0 version with a feature that improved significantly scan speed.

The first time the antivirus scanner scanned every a file -and showed it 'clean'- it added the clean file checksum to it's internal database so next time that file was opened it only had to compare stored checksum and not scan it once again.

May be avast! developers just can try and add some feature like that. I didn't mind for myself, I run Linux, and my family are not very computer savy so they think it's everything just right  ::)  but it would help to dramatically increase scan speed and feature this to market new customers for this *excellent* anti-malware tool.

Best!
« Last Edit: June 20, 2008, 03:03:46 AM by martosurf »

Offline Vlk

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Re: Improve on-access scan
« Reply #1 on: June 19, 2008, 08:09:02 PM »
Integrity checking is not a new idea (it's been around for like 15 years, even AVAST for DOS used it [back in the first half of ninetees]). However, the problem is that by then, the virus definitions were updated like once a month (or maybe twice a month, but not much more). So you only had to invalidate the integrity data once or twice a month.

Now, AV's are updated multiple times a day, and this approach is far less efficient as you basically have to rescan each file with (at least the newly added) signatures anyway...
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martosurf

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Re: Improve on-access scan
« Reply #2 on: June 20, 2008, 03:24:15 AM »
"Because the file could be infected from a time before with avast! doesn't knowing that because that virus was not known at the time of that scan" - a very good point.

Noneless it could be cool for power users to have the choice to use checksums [I think this should go to the wishlist  ;D]


I'm using avast! Pro for about 6 years now and never had any infection, with only one or two minor bugs resolved very quickly. I recomend it to every people I know - however don't know how many customers do you have from these lands  ::)

Best!




Offline igor

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Re: Improve on-access scan
« Reply #3 on: June 20, 2008, 10:54:13 AM »
Besides, there's an implicit assumption here that verifying the checksum is faster than scanning the file... which is also questionable.

Offline Lisandro

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Re: Improve on-access scan
« Reply #4 on: June 20, 2008, 03:36:13 PM »
Besides, there's an implicit assumption here that verifying the checksum is faster than scanning the file... which is also questionable.

Specially comparing big files against quick scanning (the beginning and the end of the file only).
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