•Ashampoo Anti-Virus 2015 v1.2.0 - most recent product update: 2015/02/18•
Test system: Intel E8400/G35, 4GB RAM, 40GB PATA HDD - Windows 7 HP SP1 x64
For quite some time, I had once used AAV back when this dual-engine product used Ikarus and Emsisoft. This was prior to the era of cloud-enabled solutions when things relied fully on data updates.
There are no cloud-anything components in AAV which relies solely on the timely download of the latest files from the Ashampoo servers in Germany. "The Cloud Thing" has been and will remain a subject of opinion and argument; gold to some, ordure to others. Which side of the fence you're on is irrelevant within the construct of this review.
This latest version of AAV remains dual engine with Ikarus having long been replaced with a B-Have vacant¹ bdcore.dll and avxdisk.dll. The premium Bitdefender Antivirus or Internet Security components (Active Virus Control, firewall IDS, User-mode HIPS, etc.) are not implemented, as is the norm for third-party BD SDK licensees. However, there is little dispute that BD's signature driven scanner is among the best there is, given the presence of the latest data.
BD's core is implemented within Ashampoo's AAV_Service and AAV_Contexthandler.
The Emsisoft side of things is different. Their a2hooks32.dll or a2hooks.64.dll are injected into all running processes. This implements Emsisoft's highly competent signature driven a2engine.dll scanner and the largely acclaimed behavior blocker, once marketed as the stand-alone Mamutu.
Here's a look at all the guts and glory you'll get with Ashampoo's Anti-Virus:
Since the release of the BD/Emsisoft version a ways back, in all the mainstream Web reviews/blogs and yoot toob "tests" I have yet to see a screenshot or reference to AAV's comprehensive settings utility. This presents significantly greater granularity than settings offered by the one in the lovely modern UI, no doubt to isolate the mainstream user from making decisions which might alter protection or automation or... require more decisions. As such, and you saw it here first, this one tab of default settings is shown here to illustrate:
That makes things a bit chatty, of course. There could be dozens of these on your typical Millennium-ist site:
Experts should be compelled to enable some of those and poke through the other tabs and tweak according to experience and tolerance levels.
Emsisoft data are found in a Signatures folder in AAV's Program Files root folder with the BD files in a BD folder therein:
These two are fully loaded; about 120 files for Emsisoft and 900 for BD. Expect to spend some time watching these download upon first installing AAV. Subsequent updates are incremental.
The only downside to this product is Ashampoo's concept of "Auto-update." There is no way to set an interval in configurations a̷n̷d̷ ̷i̷t̷ ̷i̷s̷ ̷n̷o̷t̷ ̷o̷t̷h̷e̷r̷w̷i̷s̷e̷ ̷d̷e̷f̷i̷n̷e̷d̷. That even hails back to the previous version when the default update for Ikarus' own product was (and probably still is) 20 minutes. Suffice to say, my observation is that AAV's interval
i̷s̷̷,a̷n̷d̷ ̷w̷a̷s̷ ̷n̷e̷v̷e̷r̷,̷s̷u̷f̷f̷i̷c̷i̷e̷n̷t̷ ̷f̷o̷r̷ ̷a̷ ̷l̷o̷c̷a̷l̷ ̷d̷a̷t̷a̷b̷a̷s̷e̷-̷d̷r̷i̷v̷e̷n̷ ̷s̷o̷l̷u̷t̷i̷o̷n̷. I have always disabled auto-update and run AAV_Updater.exe every 30 minutes in Task Scheduler.
Scroll down to my June 13 revision to the above paragraph.
Bear in mind not only are the definitions updated but also the very frequently updated Emsisoft .dat files which bear great importance. For example, a2hosts.dat holds the malicious URL data (if I recall correctly). That said, Ashampoo's servers are excellent at doling out the latest data from both providers. The BD sigs versions were on-sync with Bitdefender Free on a visiting guest's system and Ad-Aware on my production system; I check 6-8 or more times a day. There are almost always Emsisoft files rolling in, too.
While the US $49 cost is up there with competitors' retail pricing, if you register and apply for the 40-day trial license you should quickly receive an email for a 1-year $24 license. Those 365 days are added onto the 40. Monitoring the giveaway sites may afford you a six month deal for free at the end of which you'll most likely get a $24 offer, providing you opt-in to those notifications.
In my tests, AAV was extremely effective: over a few weeks, upon opening many of the latest offerings at the top of the stacks at VX Vault, Malc0de and Clean MX, either the URL was blocked or the the offender snagged upon partial download. It is the latter that's of noteworthiness in that it is the most effective implementation of download scan tech: scan while downloading the file as re-named.part to the system temp directory and if pass moved to the user download directory, correctly named. Others (i.e. Free Bitdefender Engine!!) will download as-is the complete file to the user download directory and then scan it, which is OK. Well, except for those pesky drive-bys.
Here are a couple of hours-old zero-day outlaws snagged, one each by BD and Emsi. Notice the file naming and download location; the user directory on this system is C:\Users\billary\Downloads.
• 
On-access, malicious files are snagged lickety-split by either BD or Emsi's sigs or BB. And enough with the screen shots.
Needless to say, Emsi's behavior blocker is impressive and right up there with Bitdefender's Active Virus Control.
In fact, IMHO it is Emsisoft that's The Leader when it come to whacking the Bad Guys in Ashampoo's dual product solution, though Bitdefender does hold it's own in the Web downloads game.
When used in conjunction with Windows Firewall and Safe Browsing in Firefox or Chrome or IE's Smart Screen, AAV's superb technology will provide superior protection at a bargain price point. Adding Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit, free or Premium, should create brick-wall protection for supported browsers.
Were it not for my overwhelming satisfaction with Ad-Aware Pro Security, I'd be on board with Ashampoo Anti-Virus.
Regards.
¹I don't find any libraries/drivers associated with B-Have and its virtual scanning environment (trufos.dll, etc.). One would conclude such most likely in conflict with Emsisoft's components.
Test system: Intel E8400/G35, 4GB RAM, 40GB PATA HDD - Windows 7 HP SP1 x64
For quite some time, I had once used AAV back when this dual-engine product used Ikarus and Emsisoft. This was prior to the era of cloud-enabled solutions when things relied fully on data updates.
There are no cloud-anything components in AAV which relies solely on the timely download of the latest files from the Ashampoo servers in Germany. "The Cloud Thing" has been and will remain a subject of opinion and argument; gold to some, ordure to others. Which side of the fence you're on is irrelevant within the construct of this review.
This latest version of AAV remains dual engine with Ikarus having long been replaced with a B-Have vacant¹ bdcore.dll and avxdisk.dll. The premium Bitdefender Antivirus or Internet Security components (Active Virus Control, firewall IDS, User-mode HIPS, etc.) are not implemented, as is the norm for third-party BD SDK licensees. However, there is little dispute that BD's signature driven scanner is among the best there is, given the presence of the latest data.
BD's core is implemented within Ashampoo's AAV_Service and AAV_Contexthandler.
The Emsisoft side of things is different. Their a2hooks32.dll or a2hooks.64.dll are injected into all running processes. This implements Emsisoft's highly competent signature driven a2engine.dll scanner and the largely acclaimed behavior blocker, once marketed as the stand-alone Mamutu.
Here's a look at all the guts and glory you'll get with Ashampoo's Anti-Virus:
Since the release of the BD/Emsisoft version a ways back, in all the mainstream Web reviews/blogs and yoot toob "tests" I have yet to see a screenshot or reference to AAV's comprehensive settings utility. This presents significantly greater granularity than settings offered by the one in the lovely modern UI, no doubt to isolate the mainstream user from making decisions which might alter protection or automation or... require more decisions. As such, and you saw it here first, this one tab of default settings is shown here to illustrate:
That makes things a bit chatty, of course. There could be dozens of these on your typical Millennium-ist site:
Experts should be compelled to enable some of those and poke through the other tabs and tweak according to experience and tolerance levels.
Emsisoft data are found in a Signatures folder in AAV's Program Files root folder with the BD files in a BD folder therein:
These two are fully loaded; about 120 files for Emsisoft and 900 for BD. Expect to spend some time watching these download upon first installing AAV. Subsequent updates are incremental.
The only downside to this product is Ashampoo's concept of "Auto-update." There is no way to set an interval in configurations a̷n̷d̷ ̷i̷t̷ ̷i̷s̷ ̷n̷o̷t̷ ̷o̷t̷h̷e̷r̷w̷i̷s̷e̷ ̷d̷e̷f̷i̷n̷e̷d̷. That even hails back to the previous version when the default update for Ikarus' own product was (and probably still is) 20 minutes. Suffice to say, my observation is that AAV's interval
i̷s̷̷,a̷n̷d̷ ̷w̷a̷s̷ ̷n̷e̷v̷e̷r̷,̷s̷u̷f̷f̷i̷c̷i̷e̷n̷t̷ ̷f̷o̷r̷ ̷a̷ ̷l̷o̷c̷a̷l̷ ̷d̷a̷t̷a̷b̷a̷s̷e̷-̷d̷r̷i̷v̷e̷n̷ ̷s̷o̷l̷u̷t̷i̷o̷n̷. I have always disabled auto-update and run AAV_Updater.exe every 30 minutes in Task Scheduler.
Scroll down to my June 13 revision to the above paragraph.
Bear in mind not only are the definitions updated but also the very frequently updated Emsisoft .dat files which bear great importance. For example, a2hosts.dat holds the malicious URL data (if I recall correctly). That said, Ashampoo's servers are excellent at doling out the latest data from both providers. The BD sigs versions were on-sync with Bitdefender Free on a visiting guest's system and Ad-Aware on my production system; I check 6-8 or more times a day. There are almost always Emsisoft files rolling in, too.
While the US $49 cost is up there with competitors' retail pricing, if you register and apply for the 40-day trial license you should quickly receive an email for a 1-year $24 license. Those 365 days are added onto the 40. Monitoring the giveaway sites may afford you a six month deal for free at the end of which you'll most likely get a $24 offer, providing you opt-in to those notifications.
In my tests, AAV was extremely effective: over a few weeks, upon opening many of the latest offerings at the top of the stacks at VX Vault, Malc0de and Clean MX, either the URL was blocked or the the offender snagged upon partial download. It is the latter that's of noteworthiness in that it is the most effective implementation of download scan tech: scan while downloading the file as re-named.part to the system temp directory and if pass moved to the user download directory, correctly named. Others (i.e. Free Bitdefender Engine!!) will download as-is the complete file to the user download directory and then scan it, which is OK. Well, except for those pesky drive-bys.
Here are a couple of hours-old zero-day outlaws snagged, one each by BD and Emsi. Notice the file naming and download location; the user directory on this system is C:\Users\billary\Downloads.
• On-access, malicious files are snagged lickety-split by either BD or Emsi's sigs or BB. And enough with the screen shots.
Needless to say, Emsi's behavior blocker is impressive and right up there with Bitdefender's Active Virus Control.In fact, IMHO it is Emsisoft that's The Leader when it come to whacking the Bad Guys in Ashampoo's dual product solution, though Bitdefender does hold it's own in the Web downloads game.
When used in conjunction with Windows Firewall and Safe Browsing in Firefox or Chrome or IE's Smart Screen, AAV's superb technology will provide superior protection at a bargain price point. Adding Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit, free or Premium, should create brick-wall protection for supported browsers.
Were it not for my overwhelming satisfaction with Ad-Aware Pro Security, I'd be on board with Ashampoo Anti-Virus.
Regards.
¹I don't find any libraries/drivers associated with B-Have and its virtual scanning environment (trufos.dll, etc.). One would conclude such most likely in conflict with Emsisoft's components.
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