Author Archives: Avast Blog

avast! Free Antivirus is Top Rated product of 2013

Throughout the year, independent testing labs run antivirus products through the rigors of “real-world’ testings as well as simulations and testing of specific features and performance. avast! Free Antivirus was honored as the Top Rated Program of 2013 by one of the most respected antivirus testing labs, AV-Comparatives.  Tests during 2013 were carried out on […]

Win32/64:Blackbeard & Pigeon: Stealthiness techniques in 64-bit Windows, Part 1

At the turn of the year we started to observe a Trojan, not much discussed previously (with a brand new final payload). It has many interesting aspects: It possesses a complex structure containing both 32-bit and 64-bit code; it achieves its persistence with highly invasive methods; and it is robust enough to contain various payloads/functionalites. […]

Meet Paulius Yla AVAST Evangelist

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Lithuania is a small European Union country, located in Northeastern Europe. Nearly 10% of 3,000,000 Lithuanians are protected by avast! Antivirus. Among them is one special person: Paulius Yla, an AVAST Evangelist. “Evangelist” is the term we use for those people who willingly volunteer their personal time and expertise to help others benefit from avast! […]

How to clean your hacked OpenX server

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Christmas is a time of peace, but it does not apply to hackers and creators of malware. In the middle of the holidays, the AVAST Virus Lab found a new type of infection targeting advertisement servers with OpenX installed. Unfortunately, the only antivirus detecting this threat is avast! which leads to the erroneous conclusion that […]

Influence what we will share on avast! Facebook page!

2013 was a very productive and successful year at AVAST Software. We released two versions of the consumer products: avast! V8 and avast! 2014, celebrated our 25th anniversary, and are protecting an incredible 200 million devices!  It was a wonderful year for us, and we shared a summary of our milestones in December’s post. 2014 […]

Comparison of Adware in Windows and OS X: Linkular and Genieo

By definition, Adware is a program bundle which renders advertisements in order to generate revenue for its author. In a more strict sense, e.g. for security solutions, it means an application/installer whose nature lies somewhere between a potentially unwanted application and proper malware, like Trojans or Spyware. It might use more or less aggressive methods, […]

Mobile malware a real threat in 2014

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Security industry experts from around the world must have been looking in the same crystal ball to make their predictions for the new year, because everyone agreed that mobile exploits and malware would drive growth for the industry in 2014. Mobile attacks will include malicious software that steals data from legitimate apps, spyware, ransomware and […]

AVAST response to open letter from Bits of Freedom

Recently an open letter from Bits of Freedom, a group comprised of 24 digital rights organizations and academics, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in the US and Netzpolitik.org in Germany, was sent to security software vendors. AVAST did not receive the letter “officially,” although our company was listed among the vendors. The purpose of […]

AVAST (teddy) has conquered Brazil!

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Brazil is the only Portuguese speaking country in both South and Latin America. It is also fifth biggest country in the world, according to its geographical size and in terms of population. Brazilians represent a fascinating ethnic and cultural fusion, influenced by indigenous, European, African, and Asian cultures. With the upcoming World Cup in 2014 […]