Avira Dodgy Update Released

[iisjman07]

'Catastrophic' Avira antivirus update bricks Windows PCs

Seems like most antiviruses have a dodgy update every now and then, and it's now avira's turn. It states

Components reportedly blocked included iexplore.exe, notepad.exe and regedit.exe, plus applications including Microsoft Office and Google Updater were also sin-binned.

but doesn't mention any specific symptoms, so if you've got a weird windows problem and avira's installed, you may want to grab the fix.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05..._update_snafu/

[commodore64]

Thanks for the heads up, have a few friends and customers using this, havent heard of any issues yet, but always good to know before the phone call...lol.

[PC Ops]

Yep, read it too. Haven't gotten any related calls though.
Anyways, these mistakes usually generate extra income

It seems the free version is unaffected: "Users of the affected products - Avira Professional Security, Avira Internet Security 2012 and Avira Antivirus Premium 2012 - were left with malfunctioning or inoperable systems after they applied the dodgy update"

According to Avira no real damage is done. It only blocked some Windows processes but didn't quarantaine/ delete them. Avira withdrew the update and issued a fixed one.

BTW Lol url : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/16/avira_update_snafu/

EDIT:Affected processes:cmd.exe, rundll32.exe, taskeng.exe, wuauclt.exe, dllhost.exe, iexplore.exe, notepad.exe and regedit.exe (source: dutch website: http://www.security.nl/artikel/41514...computers.html) Yes, it's in dutch

[Galdorf]

Security firm Avira has disabled the ProActiv behavior recognition module in some of its products with an update. A few days after the release of "Service Pack 0" last Monday, the company's security software unexpectedly blocked the access to important systems components. As a consequence, some computers didn't start at all, while others could only be booted in safe mode. On Tuesday, Avira announced that it had solved the behavior recognition problem with an update.
The update disabled ProActiv behaviour recognition module so basically it was bad coding and improper testing that lead to this problem, since it's not in free version it was not affected also does not effect 64bit version because ProActiv does not support 64 bit either.

[studiot]

Apart from the two products that aren't really security products - Big M and Big N there are two AV products that I routinely remove and replace with something that works properly and Avira is one of them (Bulldog is the other). Sooner or later each these four will cause issues with normal running in Windows in my experience.

[PC Ops]

Originally Posted by studiot

Apart from the two products that aren't really security products - Big M and Big N there are two AV products that I routinely remove and replace with something that works properly and Avira is one of them (Bulldog is the other). Sooner or later each these four will cause issues with normal running in Windows in my experience.

I hardly ever see problems with Avira, well except for this time ofcourse
Avira is not on my 'blacklist'... yet

[Larry Sabo]

+1, and I've been using and re-selling it for years.

[PcTek9]

I actually like avira a lot. However, I am not happy with the combining of an internet search engine "ask.com" with avira. I never like being forced to use a certain "search bar" or have my antivirus disabled. To me that is... a bit cheesy.

[nonchalant]

Moved away from Avira a while ago. Its not what it used to be.