P2P Shield does not seem to work

[donoscar]

I have recently had two cases of malware infection after downloading files via BitTorrent networks, using the uTorrent client.

In the first case I “cleaned” the system by restoring an image of the system partition. In the second I was able to get rid of the malware using avast + SUPER AntiSpyware + Malwerbyte's Anti-Malware.

In both cases the P2P Shield was operating, with the uTorrent option enabled, but in neither case it  produced any alarm. So it seems to me that this shield is useless.

[DavidR]

Well the P2P shield may be working just that the malware wasn't recognised (it happens).

So if you expand what you did in the second case and what malware was found and its file name, etc.

I don't use P2P applications, but does utorrent have an option to have the download once complete scanned by your AV ?
If so that would probably be an option.

[donoscar]

avast did recognized at least some of the malware, because in both cases it produced alarms when I was browsing the downloaded files.

I did not keep the names of the malware.

µtorrent does not have an option to scan the downloaded files (as far as I know).   

The problem may be that avast! Home has restrictions in the options available to configure the P2P Shield. To configure this Shield, there is only one options “page” (tab) available, called “Programs”. In this page, I selected “µTorrent”.

In the Help there are references to two additional pages:

“Archive”, to select the type of file which is scanned, default is self-extracting executables.
“Virus”, to select the action to be taken when malware is detected.

These last two pages do not exist in the Home version.

Usually the files I download are not EXE self-extracting executables, they are ZIP, RAR or 7Z. So avast is not scanning them.