App Review Avast Free Antivirus 21.9.2494

It is advised to take all reviews with a grain of salt. In extreme cases some reviews use dramatization for entertainment purposes.
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Shadowra

Shadowra

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Hello and welcome to the Avast Free test!
Avast is the most popular antivirus and used by novices.
They have made another version: Avast ONE, with all the setup (Antivirus, firewall, VPN etc).
For this test, I was asked to focus on Avast Free only, the ONE version has already been tested.

The product is very light, easy to use.
On phishing, Avast still has trouble, even if it has made some efforts, it leaves a lot of it...

On the other hand, in protection, Avast is good... Very good indeed! That I was even shocked!
Not only it is a carnage on the pack (it leaves 16!!! a record), but it makes a machine almost healthy!
Only one PUP is present and 2 non-active remains.

Avast is recommendable, and finally!

RAM Usage : Light
Phishing Test : 2/5 (3 missed)
Malware URL test : 10/10 (all detected)
Fake crack : 1/1 (detected by databse)
Malware Pack : Remaining 16 files to 751 malwares
Home Malware (Origami Ransomware) : 1/1 (detected by Heuristic => Win32:MalwareX-gen [Trj]

 

Andy Ful

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...
On phishing, Avast still has trouble, even if it has made some efforts, it leaves a lot of it...

On the other hand, in protection, Avast is good... Very good indeed! That I was even shocked!
...
It is a nice video. All nice words about Avast are also true and It is good to see the MT member interested in AV testing.(y)
Anyway, some things can be interesting to you:
  1. You have got very good results for Avast because it is really a very good AV. But, it is not true that these results should convince someone that Avast is a very good AV.
  2. Your testing methodology allows too big statistical errors, so there are fair chances that you would accidentally get similar results in one test when testing another AV which is not as good as Avast.
  3. If you would like to make the test more convincing with the current testing methodology, then the number of samples should be many times greater and a similar test should be done for another well-known AV (like for example Kaspersky).
If you want to increase your testing skills then look at Malware Hub tests. Generally speaking, testing AVs is not easy, so do not give up. Even professional AV testing Labs have serious problems with showing the protection differences of the 10 most popular AVs.:)
 
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Shadowra

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Malware Tester
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Sep 2, 2021
2,245
It is a nice video. All nice words about Avast are also true and It is good to see the MT member interested in AV testing.(y)
Anyway, some things can be interesting to you:
  1. You have got very good results for Avast because it is really a very good AV. But, it is not true that these results should convince someone that Avast is a very good AV.
  2. Your testing methodology allows too big statistical errors, so there are fair chances that you would accidentally get similar results in one test when testing another AV which is not as good as Avast.
  3. If you would like to make the test more convincing with the current testing methodology, then the number of samples should be many times greater and a similar test should be done for another well-known AV (like for example Kaspersky).
If you want to increase your testing skills then look at Malware Hub tests. Generally speaking, testing AVs is not easy, so do not give up. Even professional AV testing Labs have serious problems with showing the protection differences of the 10 most popular AVs.:)

Hello and thank you for your message, let me answer.

As I don't have access to the Malware Hub files, I can't use them, but I read their tests! :)

The test battery is the same : 5 Phishing, 10 url of the day, 1 fake crack (containing dozens of infections) and a malware pack provided by my provider :) (between 700 and 4000 malwares)

Avast is effective, but no antivirus will protect 100%, the protection remains between the chair and the screen.

And don't worry, I won't give up antivirus tests, even if the realization is long, I take a kiff to do them ;)

Shadowra
 

Shadowra

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Thank you for the test! (y)(y)

What I would like to request specifically (I haven't seen any videos regarding it yet exactly) is I would like to see the ransomeware shield of Avast/AVG tested specifically. With all other shields off to see how just that one performs.

The idea is good, but my Ransomware attacks the MBR before going after the partition and files.
It seems to me that Avast/AVG does not protect this area :/
 

Andy Ful

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Dec 23, 2014
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Hello and thank you for your message, let me answer.

As I don't have access to the Malware Hub files, I can't use them, but I read their tests! :)

The test battery is the same : 5 Phishing, 10 url of the day, 1 fake crack (containing dozens of infections) and a malware pack provided by my provider :) (between 700 and 4000 malwares)

Avast is effective, but no antivirus will protect 100%, the protection remains between the chair and the screen.

And don't worry, I won't give up antivirus tests, even if the realization is long, I take a kiff to do them ;)

Shadowra
I have in mind also using Autoruns to find persistence traces and other tools that can help to find out if the system has been infected.
You can also note the differences between the samples used on Malware Hub (very fresh samples, scripts, etc.) and the samples that you use in your tests.
Finally, there is a big difference when you are testing several AVs on the same pule of samples and several AVs on totally different samples. (y)
 
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