What's new in avast! version 4
The new version of avast!, version 4, comes with a large number of new features and improvements. This page describes the most important ones.
Even more powerful antivirus kernel
The scanning kernel of new avast! version has been completely rewritten. The new version is more reliable and faster. The kernel is fully multithreaded, which is important when used in server scenarios (mail servers etc.).
From version 4.8 onwards, the kernel has new anti-spyware and anti-rookkit protection added.
An important improvement is the support for new archives. avast! fully supports the following archives now: ZIP, ARJ, RAR, MIME (e.i. binhex, base64, uuencode etc.), CAB, TAR, GZIP, including the SFX variants (i.e. executable files containing given archives). The new kernel is able to scan alternative streams on NTFS partitions as well.
Big care was taken to make sure that files of arbitrary length can be tested - avast! internally uses 64-bit numbers for any file sizes, i.e. the file size is not limited to 2 or 4 GB, respectively.
Redesign of the Simple User Interface
The Simple User Interface was completely redesigned. The main requirements are the simplicity and comfortable design.
Standard design of the Simple User Interface:
Appearance of the whole program can be changed using so called skins (i.e. changeable appearances). The following images presents the skins included in the basic package:
Enhanced User Interface change (Professional Edition only)
The Enhanced User Interface has been redesigned as well. For easier navigation, a navigation bar on the left side of the window was added. The right part of the window is divided into two halves, holding the data. The program appearance resembles of MS Outlook a little.
Enhanced User Interface:
Boot-time scan
avast! 4 has a special feature for Windows NT/2000/XP/.NET users - boot-time scan. The scanning is performed before the operating system is loaded (the graphic card didn't switch to graphic mode yet).
It is important in the case that a virus is suspected to be active on your computer. The boot-time scan is performed before the virus may get activated, so the virus cannot influence the scanning in any way. It is an analogy to the old praxis from MS-DOS times - when a virus is supposed to be active, boot from the clean diskette.
Resident protection settings change
Resident providers controller has been redesigned, too. The main difference is that the basic resident protection setting has been simplified to setting the level of protection - basic or high. The default value is Basic, however, it might be useful to switch is to High in some cases.
The window of resident protection providers:
E-mail providers heuristic analysis
New feature of version 4 is heuristic analysis of e-mail scanners. It is extremely useful in protecting against new, unknown viruses and worms that are not possible to detect by the usual means. The heuristic module performs a thorough investigation of every e-mail message and watches for suspicious signs that might announce virus presence. When the number of those signs exceeds the user-defined level, the message is considered dangerous and the user is warned.
Script blocker (Professional Edition only)
The resident protection of the Professional Edition includes an additional module - Script Blocker. This module watches all the scripts being executed in the operating system (so called WSH scripts - Windows Scripting Host). It also scans all the scripts run as a part of a web page within your web browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Mozilla).
Virus chest
As our customers wished, we included so called Virus Chest to avast! 4 (sometimes called virus quarantine).
The Chest can be thought of as a folder on your disk having special properties that make it a safe, isolated place suitable for storing certain files. You can work with the files in the Chest, even though with some security restrictions.
The main properties of the Virus Chest are complete isolation from the rest of the operating system (no outside process, i.e. no virus either, may access the files inside) and the fact that the files inside the Chest may not be run (i.e. there is no danger in storing viruses there).
Updates improved
Another key improvement are automatic updates, both of the virus database and of the program itself. The updates are incremental, i.e. only the new or missing data are downloaded, thus reducing the transfer heavily. The typical size of a virus database update are tens of KB, the program update usually has hundreds of KB.
If your Internet connection is persistent, the updates are performed completely automatically in fixed time intervals. If you connect to the Internet only occasionally, avast! watches your connection and tries to perform the update when you are online.
A special feature of the Professional Edition are PUSH updates. It is a dramatic change in the philosophy of updates. Usually, every installed program checks every now and then whether a new version is available. PUSH updates, however, are initialized by our server; they result in your computer quickly responding and performing the necessary update. The system is based on the SMTP protocol, i.e. on usual e-mail messages. The updates itself are controlled by the avast! resident e-mail providers MS Outlook and Internet Mail).
The whole system if protected by asymmetric ciphers and is resistant to unauthorized misuse.
Program update being performed:
iNews
To keep the avast! users informed, they receive the latest news. The news are distributed in the same way as program updates; they inform the users about new virus risks, important changes or improvements of the program etc.
The news are updated automatically and the user is informed immediately when they are downloaded.
File repairing using Virus Recovery Database (VRDB)
An important improvement of version 4 is also the possibility to repair infected files using so called Virus Recovery Database (VRDB). This database is generated automatically when the computer is idle (it can be set how often).
If a file is infected by a virus, avast! consults its data in VRDB and if the file does have a record in the database, it is recovered exactly to its original state.
Improved logging
For an antivirus program, it is necessary to cope with unexpected events. It is a common practise to inform the user about the event, usually by writing the information to the log file.
The logging has been heavily improved since avast! version 3. Additionally, a new tool has been added to make it possible to view the log content comfortably. The Log Viewer supports searching and filtering the logs by the content or date/time.
E-mail protection settings improvement
The e-mail protection wizard has been improved as well - automatic modes have been added. So, it is not necessary to go through all the wizard pages anymore - it is enough to select the automatic protection of all the e-mail accounts in all e-mail clients that are installed on the computer.
Now, it is possible to select the protection of e-mail accounts that will be created in the future. Protecting your e-mail client (working with SMTP/POP3/IMAP4 protocol) by avast! has been documented.
Scheduler (Professional Edition only)
A nice (and requested) feature is adding the scheduled task running. Now, it is possible to run an antivirus task either at given date/time, or periodically. The scheduler takes notebook users into account and lets them specify whether the tasks should be run when the computer is running on batteries.
This feature is available to Professional Edition users only, since it is a part of the Enhanced User Interface.
New sound signals
To make the work more comfortable, avast! supports more sound signals than ever before. The sounds can be used not only when a virus is found (as in version 3), but e.g. when the task is finished or when virus database is updated.
The main package contains a basic set of sounds, however, you can use any sound files you like.
Improved virus encyclopedia
The avast! virus encyclopedia (the list of all known viruses) is more comfortable now. You can search according to many criteria, the most common viruses include links to our web page with comprehensive descriptions.
