Avast Test?

[jpChris]

Hi all,

I've searched here and on the Google for a way to test my AV. I found lots of info, but nothing to "click on" to see if Avast is blocking sites, malware, trojans, etc.

I did the EICAR Notepad test and Avast reported it correctly on scan, but that test is from the Mesozoic era.

Does anyone know of a site to check if Avast is "on the ball"?

[Pondus]

EICAR http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm
SPYCAR http://www.spycar.org/Welcome%20to%20Spycar.html

[jpChris]

Hi Pondus,

As I said, I already did the EICAR, but it's over 3 years old and — correct me if I'm wrong — but the nasties have evolved into a much more malicious state.

However, Thank You for the link to Spycar. That's exactly what I was looking for: Stuff to click on to see how Avast was doing.

It passed every test with an Avast Warning pop-up. However, Spycar only tested for Spyware and Trojans; not viruses.

Know of a good "virus tester" site?

[iRonzel]

Know of a good "virus tester" site?

http://www.av-comparatives.org/

[DavidR]

You really don't want to test against real malware, all the eicar test file is for is to reassure you that your AVs is running and the alerts are working.

The eicar file is a signature that all AVs have in their signature database for testing purposes, so it doesn't want/need to evolve.

[Pondus]

Eicar and Spycar is only a function test, if you want to do more then that you need real malware.......and you should not play with that if you don`t no how to

[jpChris]

Hi all,

Thanks for the responses. As far as deliberately DL'ing any malware\viri etc., I have no intention of doing so because (to quote Pondus) ". . . you should not play with that if you don`t no how to."

I'm not that hip.

My main reason for asking is not only to be sure Avast is covering my six, but I want to test it when the icon is hidden. I was assured on another post that having the icon hidden in no way affected the performance of Avast: But I caught the Desktop Security bug and I have to reboot to update.

So, now that I have the "testing" site(s), I'm going to try "Hide Icon When Inactive" in the Taskbar menu.

I'll let you know tomorrow how it goes. Who knows, it may have been just a glitch.

[The Dude 321]

Malware is something that is not to be played with.

Please make sure that you run the tests on a virtual machine.

Cheers
The Dude 321

[jpChris]

Hey Dude,

I've got 2 drives: My "baby" and "breakme" . I don't do nuthin' on my baby that I haven't tried first on the breakme drive.

I've got the Avast Icon hidden and ran all the Spycar tests — all OK. Next is to see if Avast will update with the icon hidden.

I'm on my breakme drive now and I'm going to try to find the site where I got the "bug" in the first place to see if Avast blocks it with the icon both hidden and showing.

[The Dude 321]

Hey Dude,

I've got 2 drives: My "baby" and "breakme" . I don't do nuthin' on my baby that I haven't tried first on the breakme drive.

I've got the Avast Icon hidden and ran all the Spycar tests — all OK. Next is to see if Avast will update with the icon hidden.

I'm on my breakme drive now and I'm going to try to find the site where I got the "bug" in the first place to see if Avast blocks it with the icon both hidden and showing.

Yes, but malware is not as dumb as that. It will try infecting your core system files regardless of where it is.

So, unless you are doing everything on a virtual drive, it is not safe and should not be advised unless you are a professional and can manually get rid of viruses which require a minimalistic understanding of codes.

[jpChris]

When I first got the Desktop bug, I got the pop-ups and knew something was wrong. My first step was to go to msconfig and uncheck everything that wasn't supposed to be there (there's only 4 items in my msconfig); wrote down the reg locations, searched and delete them; unchecked them as well in the Services section of msconfig; went to Prefetch and deleted the items from there; went to my Startup folder and deleted "them\it"; ditto with Add\Remove Programs; ran Avast, SBS&D and SuperAntispyware.

It was only then when I rebooted because I felt I had crippled "it" enough to where I could get expert help removing all of it. I couldn't get on the web, but I just turned the modem off for a minute, turned it back on and I had a connection and was then able to wipe it out.

So, Dude, while I have a basic understanding of how to cripple a bug, I just want to see how good Avast is in detecting stuff that wasn't included in the Spycar tests.

And, as I said, I'm on my breakme drive so if I get something, it's OK because I'll just do an XXClone and I'm golden.