Avast! 4 Home Edition, avast antivirus, avast! 4 Home Edition FREE Download
Antivirus kernel Virus Buletin Award
The latest version of avast! antivirus kernel features outstanding detection abilities, together with high performance. You can expect 100% detection of In-the-Wild viruses (viruses already spreading between users) and excellent detection of Trojan horses.
The kernel is certified by ICSA; and frequently takes part in the tests of Virus Bulletin magazine, often yielding the VB100 award.
The avast! engine also features outstanding unpacking support. It can scan inside the following archives: ARJ, ZIP, MIME (+ all associated formats), MAPI (Outlook pst files), DBX (Outlook Express archives), RAR, TAR, GZIP, CAB, BZIP2, ZOO, ACE, ARC, LHA/LHX, TNEF (winmail.dat), CPIO, CHM, RPM, ISO, 7ZIP and SIS. It also supports a number of executable packers (such as PKLite, Diet, UPX, ASPack, PeShield, FSG, MEW etc.).
Last, but not least, it can also scan for viruses hidden in Alternate data streams on NTFS volumes.
Simple User Interface
The Simple User Interface is used to start on-demand scanning, work with the results and change various options. Basic resident protection settings can be modified here.
The Simple User Interface is the main application of avast! 4 Home Edition. You can start additional avast! modules from here, such as the Virus Chest, Updater or Log Viewer.
The appearance of the Simple User Interface is very flexible. It supports so-called skins, allowing users to change the appearance of the application interface. The main package contains three skins, with additional skins available from our web pages.
Standard resident protection
Resident protection (the real-time protection of the operating system), is one of the most important parts of an antivirus program today. avast! features a powerful resident module that is able to detect a virus before it has any chance to infect your computer.
avast! Home Edition contains resident protection of the computer file system and a resident module for e-mails and news.
File system protection ensures that no virus will be started on the computer. It offers a wide range of settings, such as the possible to specify that files will be scanned during copying, or that the scanning will include files with given set of extensions only.
E-mail/News protection consists of two independent modules; first, there is a generic scanner working on the SMTP/POP3/IMAP4/NNTP protocol level. It is capable of protecting any existing e-mail client that uses these protocols. Second, there is a special plugin for MS Outlook only; the mail scanning is completely transparent, requiring no special settings.
A new feature of version 4 is heuristic analysis of e-mail scanners. This feature can protect against new, unknown viruses and worms that are not possible to detect by the usual means. The heuristic module performs a thorough investigation of every e-mail message and watches for suspicious signs, that might announce virus presence. When the number of those signs exceeds a user-defined level, the message is considered dangerous and the user is warned.
P2P and IM Shields
Avast features a module for the protection of IM (Instant Messaging, “chat”) programs, and a module for the protection of P2P (peer-to-peer) programs. The list of supported IM and P2P programs is extensive with more than 30 programs currently supported.
While chat itself would not impose any serious security risks in terms of viruses, today’s IM applications are far from being just chatting tools: most of them support more or less sophisticated file sharing methods – which may quite easily lead to virus infections, if not properly monitored.
The P2P protection module doesn’t need much explanation – on today’s P2P networks (such as Kazaa) there are thousands of infected files, and an effective protection is a must.