Due to the fast growing amount of malware out there in the wild our virus definition files grow fast as well. We monitored the situation with our Updates very closely. We realise that users of the free Avira AntiVir Personal had issues fetching the Updates in time recently and did come up with a few ideas how we could solve the problem and to better satisfy the needs of our users.

Two of the results are getting realized today: First, we switch from our current virus definition files (called iVDF) to a new format called nVDF. iVDF consists of 4 VDF files, while nVDF uses at least 32 files – we need to transfer less data for updating our virus definitions effectively in the future.

This means that we need to deliver about 25 MByte to every Avira installation starting today for switching to the new update system. This might lead to some delays for some users, especially for the users of our free version Avira AntiVir Personal. Just to get an idea about what we’re talking here: More than 100.000.000 Users are trying to get the update more or less on the same day. That is more than 2.5 Petabytes (or 2,500 Terabytes) of traffic.

To ease the bandwidth bottleneck, we decided to additionally use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). We were first testing a CDN built up by our current Internet service provider. Shortly after activating the CDN, the redirectors – which redirect the update requests to servers close to the users location – were overloaded and couldn’t answer the requests anymore. The situation was solved a little later on, but the CDN isn’t big enough yet to spread this huge update in time. So we decided to switch to a global player in the CDN market to deliver the update.

We hope that the data is transfered much faster this way so also the users of free Avira AntiVir Personal can enjoy their security solution without any problems: After this Update the situation will get much better for the users of Avira AntiVir Personal.

N.B.: Users of commercial Avira products like Avira AntiVir Premium, Avira Premium Security Suite or Avira AntiVir Professional don’t face any of these problems as they access our servers with reserved bandwidth.

Dirk Knop
Technical Editor

Today we released the Update EU2 for all Avira AntiVir 9 products. The developers fixed a bunch of small bugs which some users occasionally ran into. The update is being distributed via automatic update function, so there is no need for users to do anything.

To name a few of the bugs fixed: Our developers further improved the IMAP support of the MailGuard. For example, in rare circumstances an application error in Thunderbird occurred when using 1&1 IMAP accounts.

Some issues with the firewall of Avira Premium Security Suite have been solved as well. These mostly are of cosmetic nature like firewall dialogs did not fit on the 800×480 pixels display of the EeePC. Some trusted publishers weren’t always properly detected in applications, resulting in more firewall prompts for user action. For the server versions the update corrects some errors, too.

Additionally we’re planning to release more international versions of AntiVir 9 tomorrow. We’re going to publish the software versions Avira AntiVir Premium, Avira Premium Security Suite and Avira AntiVir Professional in Italian, Spanish, French and Russian. The free Avira AntiVir Personal will be available in Italian and French then as well!

Dirk Knop
Technical Editor

We have introduced a new feature for the Firewall integrated in the Avira Premium Security Suite. The feature is called Privileged applications and is about making the life of a user much easier.

In AV8, if you allow a program to connect to the network, its traffic is going to be filtered through the adapter rules first. This means, for example, that if you want to start a program which needs some responses from the network while the Security Level is High, the incoming traffic will be blocked. So, even if you allowed your application to access the net, it must obey the Adapter rules. If these rules filter some traffic needed by the application, it will simply not function correctly.

Technically speaking, the traffic is now filtered like this:

Fig. 1: The new firewall architecture.

What has changed?

In the new version of the firewall, for the applications which are marked as privileged we changed the order in which the rules are applied. The adapter rules are ignored for the traffic coming to the process ID of the application which was allowed with the privileged status. From this point on, when you allow an application in the firewall, it will simply function correctly, no matter what kind of security level you have.

How to enable this special status

When the popup for the application is displayed, you must enable the checkbox „allow privileged” and click on the „Allow” button. That’s it…

Fig. 2: Firewall popup for new applications.

Once you allowed such an application, you can see and change its status in the Configuration Center:

Fig. 3: Enhanced configuration of the firewall.

The applications which are normally allowed by clicking only the „Allow” button without enabling the checkbox above are marked as „Filtered”; the applications which had the checkbox active, are marked as „Privileged”.

The initial value of the checkbox can be configured in the Configuration Center, under Popup Settings.

Fig. 4: Configuration for the application popups presets.

WARNING:
This feature is a huge step toward a better usability of the product. However, please be very careful which programs you allow as privileged.

Sorin Mustaca
Manager International Software Development

Currently we’re developing and testing the Avira products in version 9. Since the beta is already out, it’s time to take a look at some of the new features we were adding. The release of the new products should take place in March.

One of the features that users were asking for in our security suite were parental controls. We listened to those requests and our developers did a great job of adding them!

Fig. 1: The configuration screen for the parental controls in Avira Premium Security Suite 9.

The parental controls are meant for parents who want to restrict and/or control the internet usage of their children. Children shouldn’t need to look at pornographic web sites for example, and online gambling isn’t suitable for them either.

We implemented the web filter on protocol level as addition to the WebGuard so it works independant from the web browser in use – may it be the Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox or Safari. The filtering is done based upon roles, where each account on the computer can get its own ruleset.

Say, you have two accounts, Administrator and Kids. Administrator can use the pre-defined profile for adults, and if someone logs into the machine as Kids, the rules (for example the pre-defined Child-profile) are active.

You can define your own profiles and choose from roundabout 15 categories like pornography, entertainment and so on and allow or forbid the users of such a profile to view web sites falling into these categories. Additionally the Administrator can add web sites to allow or forbid anyhow, even if the profile categories say otherwise (black- and whitelisting).

The administrator can (and should!) protect the configuration with a password, so that restricted accounts can’t modify the rules that are in place.

Dirk Knop
Technical Editor