avast! antivirus Mac Edition Product Details

avast! antivirus Mac Edition brings avast!'s multi-awarding winning antivirus technology to the Mac platform, to protect Mac users' valuable data and programs, as well as protecting their PC user friends and co-workers.

Features at a Glance

• Universal binary (the same application works on both PowerPC and Intel architectures)
• Central scanning service, with adjustable priority and remote accessibility
• Access to the scanning service via TCP or UNIX sockets
• Modular architecture (GUI can adopt features of newer daemon automatically)
• Auto-run after startup
• On-demand, on-access and mail antivirus protection
• Chesting/manipulating/repairing tools for viruses
• Rich and extensible archiver/packer support
• Engine with nearly identical capabilities as the Linux/Windows version
• Report generators for on-demand and on-access scans
• The same antivirus database as for avast! for Windows
• Automatic (scheduled) and manual update polling
• User-friendly GUI and one-click-to-install installator (with no need for restart)
• Standard Install/Upgrade features
• Templated pre-setup for most wanted preferences after installation
• Drag‘n‘drop scanning, bindings between on-access and on-demand scans
• Infected/protected/clean mails are marked directly in mailer app using different colors
• Mail messages can be scanned also on demand (select a set of messages, and scan them)
• Attachments can be scanned upon request
• The scanning speed on PowerPC CPUs nearly the same as on Intel
• Automatic pop-up announcement when new critical update is released
• Protection against downloading of forged/modified antivirus databases
• Uses license files or can run in a 60-day free trial-mode after first installation
• Known file types are shown with their proper icons, archives and packages are distinguished too
• Set of user-selected preferred paths for one-click or automatic scanning (incoming directories etc)
• All alert windows are cummulative, with summary results (user isn‘t annoyed by thousands of popup windows)

avast! antivirus Mac Edition is an antivirus solution for Apple Macintosh machines, running on Mac OS X systems. The solution incorporates a central virus-scanning daemon and its cooperative clients, such as mail, on-demand or on-access scanner. All parts are integrated under common user-friendly GUI. Although the internal design approaches preformance requirements for a server antivirus protection, this aplication is intended as an end-user desktop solution for common desktop computers, in a commensurable pricing cathegory. New users might get familiar with the product and its features in a 60-day full-featured trial-mode.

Flexibility

Owing to its flexible and modular architecture, avast! antivirus Mac Edition can be used as a low-overhead stable antivirus solution on nearly all desktop machines, including some older Macintosh models. All parts of the solution are distributed as universal binaries, and thus both PowerPC and Intel architectures are supported natively at their full performance level. However, please check system requirements.

Full Control and Virus Chest

The product offers a well-arranged graphical interface for on-demand antivirus scanning with progress indication. In parallel, a background on-access protection can be activated, where findings can be trasferred to the main on-demand GUI for additional processing. An integrated virus chest for keeping infected or suspicious files is also available.

Mail Scanning - built in

Mail scanning is built in, protecting a common infection vector on the system. This is performed by an independent processing channel (for performance reasons).

The Scanning Service

The underlying central daemon can serve a number of scanning tasks in parallel. This feature is accessible via TCP or UNIX socket interface, and is used by default by the on-demand scanner, on-access scanner and mail clients. But, this interface might be used also for remote scanning, local scanning activities in backgroud, or might provide further integration with another product which needs antivirus protection services. The central scanning daemon uses the same virus database format as the Windows avast! family, and thus benefits from the same high frequency of updates.

Windows compatible scanning

The detecting abilities are identical as those for Windows product, including the capability to detect the full range of malware from the world of PC/Windows. Because of the native database usage, the daemon features outstanding detection abilities, together with high performance. You can expect 100% detection of In-the-Wild viruses (viruses already spreading between users) and excellent detection of Trojan horses with minimal false positives.

ICSA Certified

The scanning engine itself is certified by ICSA Labs and frequently takes part in the tests of Virus Bulletin magazine, regularly yielding the VB100 award.

Unpacker Support

As in avast! for Windows, avast! antivirus Mac Edition features outstanding unpacking support. It can scan inside almost the same number of archives as under Windows. Support for ARJ, MIME, EXEC, ZIP, RAR, TAR, GZ, BZIP2, ARC, ZOO, WINEXEC, LHARC, CHM, CPIO, RPM, ISO, TNEF, DBX, SIS, OLE and INSTALL is available. Furthermore, the particular set of active unpackers, used for scanning, might be specified in the Preferences pane, to get optimal scanning speed.

User Interface

The user interface serves as a front-end for user’s on-demand requests, but also buffers processes' requests from other parts of the solution. This application also spawns the central scanning service daemon and loads the kernel part of on-access mechanism.