AVG 8.0 spotlights web threats

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 27 February 2008 12:15

Business IT - Technology

A key feature of AVG Internet Security 8.0 is realtime protection against dodgy or compromised web sites. The new security package is due to be released today and has some key advantages over its competitors according to its developers.

Using technology acquired with Exploit Prevention Labs late last year, AVG 8.0 intercepts the content received from the web server and scans it for exploits.

AVG chief technology officer Karel Obluk told iTWire that this approach has several advantages over the static analysis used by McAfee and Google. Firstly, it protects against transient web sites that are set up for a few days with the primary purpose of infecting PCs that are drawn to them through spam emails and other techniques.

Secondly, it catches malicious or compromised sites as soon as they begin serving malware. Services such as SiteAdvisor rely on these sites coming to the operator's notice and being analysed before warnings can be posted.

Thirdly, some malicious sites very sneakily vary what they serve, limiting the delivery of exploits to just part of the day. This reduces the chance of a static reporting service finding the malware, but a proportion of visitors still get infected.

Furthermore, AVG 8.0 detects both the exploits used to install malware onto PCs as well as the malware itself. This means new kinds of malicious code may be blocked before a specific detections are provided.

Real-time scanning as used by the new LinkScanner feature "is something that's very important," said Obluk.

It also avoids a problem encountered by a number of AFL clubs - once Google has detected malicious code on a web site, it can take much longer to get the warning removed than it does to clean up the site.

Other features of AVG 8.0 include faster scanning and mail filtering ("we are trying not to slow down your PC," said Obluk) including a new engine that can take advantage of multi-core CPUs, new protection against rootkits, scanning of files arriving over ICQ or MSN, and an all-new firewall.

The software should be released today (February 28) and will cost $A101.95 for a two-year, single computer licence, or $A123.25 for a three-pack. Other multi-licence packs will also be offered, as well as version 8.0 of AVG's free basic antivirus product.