Avast free antivirus

[Jeff T]

Does Avast free antivirus protect against rootkits? If not, which
antivirus's do.

 

[David H. Lipman]

Does Avast free antivirus protect against rootkits? If not, which antivirus's do.

RootKits are just another form of trojan. Any fully installed anti virus product
performing "On Demand" and "On Access" scanning have the ability to protect against
RootKit droppers. Like any malware it is a complex hit and miss whack a mole game. The
real problem is not protecting against them but if they do get installed detecting and
removing them.

Avast, AntiVir, Eset, Kaspersky, MSE are all good. Some better.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Does Avast free antivirus protect against rootkits?

Yes, but the issue is not so much what categories of malware a
particular program protects against; it's much more an issue of what
percentage of those infections it protects against.

So, for example (I'm just making up these numbers to illustrate my
point) a program that protects against 99% of known rootkits is better
than one that protects against 98%.

No such program is perfect, but Avast is a good choice.
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP

 

[Iceman]

RootKits are just another form of trojan. Any fully installed anti virus product
performing "On Demand" and "On Access" scanning have the ability to protect against
RootKit droppers. Like any malware it is a complex hit and miss whack a mole game. The
real problem is not protecting against them but if they do get installed detecting and
removing them.

Avast, AntiVir, Eset, Kaspersky, MSE are all good. Some better.

How does Grisoft's AVG perform in this respect?

 

[Paul]

Yes, but the issue is not so much what categories of malware a
particular program protects against; it's much more an issue of what
percentage of those infections it protects against.

So, for example (I'm just making up these numbers to illustrate my
point) a program that protects against 99% of known rootkits is better
than one that protects against 98%.

No such program is perfect, but Avast is a good choice.
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP

You can try this site, for charts and graphs.

http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/comparativesreviews/detection-test

Paul

 

[VanguardLH]

Does Avast free antivirus protect against rootkits? If not, which
antivirus's do.

Yes, plus Avast is one of the very few free AV programs that includes a
boot-time scan that runs before Windows (and malware) is loaded. Free
versions of Avira, AVG, Defender/MSE, PC Tools, and other free AVs don't
have a boot-time scan feature.

From Avast's help:

avast! 6.0 Free Pro Internet Security

High performance antivirus engine YES YES YES
Anti-rootkit protection YES YES YES
Anti-spyware protection YES YES YES
avast! WebRep YES YES YES
avast! AutoSandbox YES YES YES
avast! Sandbox NO YES YES
avast! SafeZone NO YES YES
Command line scanner NO YES YES
Anti-spam filter NO NO YES
Built-in firewall NO NO YES

Although according to the table there is no command-line on-demand
scanner, like to add an event in Task Scheduler for when you want to
scan (rather than use Avast's own inbuild scheduler), there is one. Run
the non-GUI ashquick.exe which is the quick scanner and only scans on
drives (you specify the drive letter(s) as parameters). The more
configurable ashcmd.exe full scanner that has command-line switches,
like what folder or file to scan, only comes in the payware versions.

I don't have experience with the trial copies of their payware to know
if their firewall is any good, so my recommendation is to use the one in
Windows (if that's all you need) or use Comodo Firewall or Online Armor.
Unless you actually get spam, like you are super-sensitive and can't
stand getting maybe 2 per week, I'd suggest not bothering with their
anti-spam filter even if you were looking to get their payware. Spam
filtering is best performed up on the mail server.