Advisories

Vulnerable Antivirus Anyone?

Avast Antivirus vulnerable to attacks

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

5th of December 2007, 11:30 GMT

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We all love free goodies and if the freeware license comes with an antivirus technology, it's a dream coming true. Avast Antivirus is probably one of the best alternatives for

the traditional and expensive antivirus solutions, because it is available for free for all the users. An old quote says that if you want high quality, you have to pay for it. Although Avast is famous for its pretty amazing security features, a security vulnerability has been discovered in the versions prior to 4.7.1098. Security company Secunia wrote that the impact of the vulnerability has not been disclosed yet, but the flaw has already been confirmed and patched by the parent company.

"The vulnerability is caused due to an unspecified error when handling specially crafted TAR files. No further information is currently available," Secunia wrote in the advisory. The vulnerability was rated as moderately critical, Secunia adding that it affected both avast! Home and avast! Professional. Since the 4.7.1098 release has been the only version not affected by the flaw, the update seems to be the only solution to avoid a potential successful exploitation.

Antivirus avast! 4 Home/Professional version 4.7.1098 has been released on December 4, 2007 and includes several fixes beside the mentioned patch supposed to correct the security issue. For example, it includes "improvements in various unpackers (winexec, installer, CAB, NTFS Streams), speed improvements in the Outlook plugin (Windows XP ) and optimizations in the updater," as it is mentioned on the official website of the antivirus.

Avast Antivirus is pretty popular among the Internet users, because many of them prefer to install this application, instead of buying another technology. For example, Avast Home Edition has no less than 146,194 downloads on Softpedia, while the Professional Edition has 'only' 82,271 hits.

Although I'm sure you know it, you can download avast! Antivirus straight from Softpedia. The Home version is available here while the Professional flavor can be downloaded using this link.

TAGS:

avast | antivirus | security | flaw | vulnerability

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