What's with your firewall? Is it turned off or something?
Nope, I'm using comodo (and its level is set to safe). I have just added a new rule to the firewall to attempt to counter this threat. I also checked to see if there was already a rule in place that might have been allowing it in the first place, but there doesn't appear to be.
Adding a new rule won't make any difference if the network shield is getting in before comodo as the DCOM exploit attempt would be intercepted before the rule could even check.
- external DCOM Attacks are speculative, not targeted and tries to exploit a vulnerability in out of date OS, if your OS is up to date then you aren't vulnerable to the exploit. That doesn't stop them (usually someone from the same ISP with an infected computer) trying to see if it can infect others.
Your firewall should be the first line of defence in this, but avast also monitors common attack ports using the Network Shield, ideally the firewall should block it and avast wouldn't know about it, but for whatever reason avast is first in line over your firewall.
There isn't much a user can do to dictate the running order of a program which would be down to windows I guess.
You could leave comodo firewall installed (I hope you haven't got their AV installed also) and reinstall avast (uninstall, reboot install) and see if that changes the running order of comodo and the network shield.