Author Archives: Avast Blog

How to change the voices in avast! Antivirus

Question of the week: Is it possible to change the woman’s voice to a man’s in AVAST? One of the most commented upon features of avast! Antivirus is the female voice of our notifications. The familiar message AVAST virus database has been updated is heard by nearly 200 million AVAST users around the world every […]

Browser Toolbars – almost malware?

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by Thomas Salomon, head of AVAST Software ‘s German Software Development team In a previous blog post we wrote about the statistics from avast! Browser Cleanup. These statistics have become even worse: More than 1,000,000 (one million!) browser add-ons are available for the three main browsers More than 82% of all add-ons have a bad […]

avast! SecureLine makes free WiFi safer

This summer, lots of us will be chilling out by the pool at hotels around the world,  surfing the Internet and checking email. Along with a burger and fries, 11,500 McDonalds are now serving up free WiFi so customers can access the Internet using their laptops, smartphones, or tablets at no charge. You can sip […]

Facebook virus empties bank accounts

A dangerous Trojan named ZeuS is making its way among Facebook users. This old Trojan horse has infected millions of computers over the years, stealing banking credentials and other personally identifiable information. Zeus can lie dormant on infected computers until the unsuspecting victim logs into their bank’s website. Once you’re logged in, cybercrooks can steal […]

avast! BeFree photo contest winners

We are pleased to announce the winners of the avast! Be Free photo contest. Entrants were asked to submit an original photo interpreting what the Avast slogan “Be Free” means to them. We received everything from brave adventurers jumping out of planes to friends enjoying a day at the carnival to smiling dogs. The winners […]

For Your Satisfaction – Android:Satfi-A [Trj]

We all have our favorite apps for all the things we do. I use Shazam when I don’t know what song is playing, Maps when I’m lost, FlightRadar24 when I’m curious about the plane flying over my head. These apps are there for my satisfaction; they meet some need. Each of us have different needs […]

New High School and College Grads – Read This!

Social media profiles affects college admission, job searches, and careers A 24-year-old high school teacher in Georgia, USA, lost her job after an anonymous e-mailer complained about a Facebook picture of her sipping wine and drinking beer while on vacation in Europe. An Arizona woman was fired after ranting on Facebook when she was passed […]

Facebook profiles are cloned

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A low-tech type of identity theft is threatening Facebook users in South Africa. Facebook “cloning” has been around for years, but has had a revival this past week. We learned about it in a personal way – the brother of an Avast colleague, Richard B. from South Africa, had his profile cloned and notified Richard. […]

Analysis of a self-debugging Sirefef cryptor

Recently I wrote a blog post about a legitimate website spreading Sirefef malware. Then I continued with a deeper analysis and noticed that it uses an interesting cryptor. Malware authors spread many new variants of malware every day. These variants often look completely different at the first glance. That’s why regular updates of your antivirus […]