The program has now been officially released as 4.8.1169. Thanks to everyone who helped testing.
Hi all,
after some time, it's my pleasure to announce the availability of a pre-release build of the upcoming version of avast! Home/Professional - version 4.8.
How to install it (for starters - most people already know this trick anyway ): simply download and run the following program: (link removed) and follow the on-screen instructions. That's about all it takes (provided you have the latest release version of avast Home/Pro already installed, of course).
4.8 is quite an important update for us.
It contains the following major improvements:
- a built-in antirootkit module
- a built-in self-defense module
- starting with v4.8, avast is now officially an antispyware application, too (CheckMark certified).
Plus there's a number of not-so-big new features, such as the ability to track scan progress and a large number of improvements in both the scanning engine and other components (such as the boot-time scanner, and the updater).
BTW This first beta build will be followed by another one (most likely in about a week). This is because it still doesn't contain some of the anti-rootkit functionality (so far, boot-time scan can be used to detect/remove rootkits; in the next beta, the GUI scanners will also feature antirootkit capabilities).
Also, in this first version, we're still aware of some methods to bypass the self-defense module, and these are being worked on continuously. This especially applies to the ashDisp.exe process which is somewhat harder to protect than the rest (i.e. the avast services) as it shares the user's logon session and is thus more easily attackable.
Any comments on this release are very welcome and appreciated!
Thanks
Vlk