In October 2012, the same week that Avast reached the milestone of 2 million likes on Facebook, Vince Steckler, CEO of Avast Software, approved the creation of a social media “listening post” using Socialbakers powerful suite of analytical, listening and publishing tools. Avast is Socialbakers 1000th customer. A small, but dedicated, community team works on communications, content creation, customer care, and marketing from Avast headquarters in the Czech Republic and a satellite office in the United States.

“Socialbakers helps us monitor thousands of online conversations about our products and services on a global scale in real time,” said Steckler. “This allows for timely review and response to social media posts and content. We look forward to a long, productive relationship.” Read more…

Avast! is the first free antivirus software to be offered in the Windows store after being tested and passing the rigorous requirements for Microsoft® Windows® 8 operating system compatibility. Avast! Free Antivirus earned the coveted compatibility certification and the right to display the “Windows 8 Compatible” logo.

“Avast has a track record of receiving Microsoft Windows certifications, and Windows 8 is not an exception,” said Ondřej Vlček, Chief Technology Officer of Avast. “Having avast! in the Windows store provides Windows users with a certified PC security solution that is far better than what they would have with the pre-bundled Windows Defender antivirus previously known as Microsoft Security Essentials.”

Windows Defender is basic virus and malware protection that provides similar protection, uses the same antimalware engine, and has a look akin to Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE).  Performance tests by AV-Test, a respected antivirus software testing lab, show that avast! Free Antivirus has notably surpassed that of MSE in all 2012 monthly Real-World tests. While it does a good job on common widespread malware, as do most good brands, MSE lacks the cutting edge protection against new unknown “zero-day” attacks of which avast! Free Antivirus excels in detecting.

Earning the certification gives avast! Free Antivirus the right to display the “Windows 8 Compatible” logo after passing Microsoft’s technical requirements for compatibility and reliability with Windows 8.

“The logo is an indication that the app has been developed and fully tested to work great on a given platform. Because of all the innovations in Windows 8, getting the logo this time was not simple, but getting it early on shows a clear dedication of my team to our users, making sure they can start moving to this new exciting platform immediately,” said Vlček.

Windows® is a trademark of the Microsoft group of companies.

This past weekend, Microsoft splashed TV advertising for it’s new Windows 8 operating system during college football games in the U.S. and on TVs in 42 other countries. Despite the initial thrust, an AP survey of 1,200 adults in the U.S. showed over half hadn’t heard of the new OS, and those that had some knowledge of it showed little interest in buying a new laptop or desktop computer running on Windows 8.

We did our own survey of over 350,000 computer users across seven languages (English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, and Czech) before the launch and found that most expect the new Microsoft Windows 8 operating system to be safer, but only 8% of respondents said they will buy a new computer any sooner because of it. Read more…

Question of the week: I noticed you announced on Facebook that a brand new avast! program update is available. How do I get it?

Thanks for being our fan on Facebook. Indeed, we announced a new program update this week for avast! Free Antivirus, avast! Pro Antivirus, and avast! Internet Security to version number 7.0.1473. It’s the last program update before version 8 is released at the beginning of 2013. You can get the new version immediately by invoking the Program Update feature from within the avast! user interface. New users can get it by downloading from the avast! website.

Let me explain a little further: By default, avast! updates the engine and virus definitions automatically whenever a new version is available, but the program update is set to ask you first. You can choose to accept program updates automatically, just like the engine and virus definitions, by clicking on “Settings” then “Updates” and checking “Automatic update.”

Here’s what the Current Status of my avast! Internet Security looked like before I updated it. You can see there is a link to update on the right.

Another way to see it is in the Maintenance tab of your program. Click on “Update”, and you can check the current version of both the “Update engine and virus definitions” and the “Program.” You can manually update either by clicking on the green arrow. Normally, clicking on “Update Program” automatically updates both the program and the program engine and virus definitions.

We hope you enjoy the newest version of avast! Antivirus. If you have a question or comment about the new update, please visit our NEW PROGRAM UPDATE 7.0.1473 forum topic.

Question of the Week: I’m a gamer who also banks and shops online. Am I at risk for identity theft?

Your activities online can potentially make you more vulnerable to identity theft. How many times a month do you access your bank account online? How many email addresses do you have? Do you like to try previews of new games? These questions can help you determine your exposure to identity theft.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, it takes people an average of six months and 200 hours to recover from identity theft.

StaySafeOnline, the organization behind National Cyber Security Awareness Month, of which Avast is a proud champion, has an Online Identity Risk Calculator that can help you know if you’re at risk. Players answer some questions to find their personal identity risk score and get practical tips on keeping their online identity protected. Play now!

Cybersecurity begins with STOP. THINK. CONNECT. These three simple steps are the starting point for staying safer and more secure online.

• STOP: Before you use the Internet, take time to understand the risks and learn how to spot potential problems. An obvious step is to install antivirus protection. For the risk averse, we suggest avast! Internet Security with SafeZone, an isolated environment that keeps your sensitive transactions private.
• THINK:  Take a moment to be certain the digital path ahead is clear. Watch for warning signs and consider how your online actions could impact your safety or your family’s. 
• CONNECT:  Enjoy the Internet with greater confidence, knowing you’ve taken the right steps to safeguard yourself and your computer.

Avast Software is proud to be a champion that supports National Cyber Security Awareness Month with news and tips on how, together, we can make a safer digital society.

Avast! Free Antivirus won the top rating for malware removal from independent research organization AV-Comparatives last month, and this month is the only antivirus solution that also received the ADVANCED+ award for performance. The latest performance test measured the impact on system resources and speed of 19 antivirus products, and avast! Free Antivirus was the best scoring FREE product again.

AV-Comparatives performance testing is a series of real-world scenarios that includes downloading, extracting, copying, and encoding files, installing and launching applications, in addition to an automated testing suite. The ranking system is three-levels: “Standard,” “Advanced” and “Advanced+” awards. To receive the “Advanced+” award, avast! Free Antivirus was compared to mostly paid-for antivirus suites based on how much impact the product has on system resources, including protection against ‘real-world’ zero-day malware attacks, detection of a representative set of malware discovered in the last 2-3 months, false positive rates, and scanning speed. Avast was the highest scoring free product and out-shined a host of paid-for products and other free products.

These results are proof that it is not necessary to pay for excellent quality antivirus protection.  Avast! Free Antivirus provides award-winning high protection rates against malware without degrading the system performance or troubling users.

Get award-winning antivirus protection on your own PC, download avast! Free Antivirus. We also have award-winning protection for Mac and your Android devices.

AVAST Software has teamed up with Facebook to help you and your friends stay safe. AVAST is sharing its Virus Lab data with Facebook in the combined attempt to prevent malware being shared unknowingly by Facebook users. Whenever someone clicks a link within Facebook, Facebook checks the URL in the AVAST cloud, in real time. If the URL is infected, the user sees a message warning of the potential threat.

Nearly half of the world’s Internet users log onto Facebook each month to share interesting things, play games, check in to shops and restaurants, tag photos, and most of all, connect with their friends. Facebook’s networks of more than a billion people make it attractive to cybercrooks who try to gain access to our accounts and passwords. Once in, crooks use our connections to spread hoax messages or malicious apps to our friends, attempting to trick them into sending money or sharing personal information. Who among us hasn’t been curious about celebrity death rumors, tempted by free gift cards, or concerned because our friend was mugged and stranded in a foreign country?

“We’ve seen that the most prominent way of spreading malware now is through links to infected websites, rather than the traditional method of emailing infected files,” said AVAST Software CEO Vince Steckler. “Our Virus Lab has tracked about 2 million infected websites just in the last 12 months and the best way to stop these infections is to prevent links to them being shared.”

Over 160 million people use avast! for their PCs, Macs and Android devices, and they work together in a vast network of anonymous security sensors called CommunityIQ. These sensors provide information about possible suspicious files which allow new threats to be detected and neutralized almost as soon as they appear.

“Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our users and their data. Beginning today, Facebook will be able to leverage Avast’s feed of malicious URLs to augment our existing site integrity systems and those in our community will be able to download Avast’s software to better protect themselves and their devices. We look forward to working with Avast to provide an even more secure experience for those who use our service,” said Joe Sullivan, CSO of Facebook.

Who will it be?

When Martin Zima of the Avast Marketing team established the avast! Facebook page on December 2nd, 2008, he could not imagine, that nearly four years later this page would have two million fans! That’s a 2 with six zeros – 2,000,000. None of us could imagine it. And now, we are waiting in anticipation to welcome our 2 millionth Facebook fan.

Who will it be?

Let me give you the bigger picture: avast! antivirus is a Czech product; AVAST Software has it’s HQ in Prague; Prague has less than 1.3 million inhabitants, and the entire Czech Republic struggles to reach 11,000,000 people. Having a Facebook page with 2,000,000 fans is an outstanding result, and we can say that we are likely the biggest Czech-founded page in the world.

This however is not our success alone, but YOURS too. Without your LIKES, we wouldn’t be getting ready for this celebration. Therefore we are preparing some nice surprises for you. Every celebration however requires some preparation.   This “for play” can sometimes be even more enjoyable than the actual party. 

What you can expect in the upcoming days?

We estimate that we will reach 2,000,000 fans around  October 27^th. Maybe the 2 millionth fan will be one of your friends. YOU can help us speed this process up, so we can celebrate sooner. How? Every day we will have a little quiz, poll, or question for you. Every day you will get a chance to win a license for avast! Internet Security or avast! Pro for Mac. Every day you will get a chance to have your picture on our cover image along with your “FREEky Security Tip of the Day.”

Invite your friends to become avast! fans and participate as well, as the most active fans (check your position as avast! TOP FREEk here) will be awarded with… No, I don’t want to spoil the surprise. We will keep you posted.

Follow our Facebook page, answer our quizzes, invite your friends. Simply have fun celebrating 2,000,000 fans with avast!

Earlier this week, a new variant of the Dorkbot/Ruskill malware attacked users of the Skype video calling service. This malware can affect a huge amount of sites and online services and can attack almost all known web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Flock and other programs such as MSN, wlcomm.exe etc.

The avast! VirusLab analyzed this malware, which you can read about in articles published on the web, but none analyzed the new module that can hijack Skype messenger which is now the bigger threat to users. This module has a packed form around 70KB. After the removal of the custom packer / loader the pure size is 16 384b. The module is very small but includes 31 known language versions of phishing messages that appear in the Skype messenger window. This localization is based on OS language via GetLocaleInfo API. After bypass return value you can see different language mutations.

Phishing messages in various languages

Sample of phishing messages in various languages:

• lol is this your new profile pic?
• hey é essa sua foto de perfil? rsrsrsrsrsrsrs
• hej je to vasa nova slika profila?
• hey c’est votre nouvelle photo de profil?
• ?hey esta es tu nueva foto de perfil?
• hey ini foto profil?
• hei er dette din nye profil bilde?
• hej to jest twój nowy obraz profil?
• hey ito sa iyong larawan sa profile?
• ?aquesta és la teva nova foto de perfil?
• hej detta är din nya profilbild?
• hej jeli ovo vasa nova profil skila?
• hey la anh tieucua ban?
• sa k’vo profili lusankary
• hey e la tua immagine del profilo nuovo? Read more…