Posted 05.12.2020 by admin

What Is Avast Extension Necessary For Mac

Avast Free Mac Antivirus Review: Avast Mac Security 2017 has for a long time been a free product from the avast company in with its headquarters in Czech offering best internet security application for Apple Macintosh OS.
Avast Online Security Extension Added a “Shopping” Component No, the install process didn’t tell us about this. About a week ago, we were playing around with installing a lot of nonsense from crapware sites, so we loaded up trusty Avast antivirus to see how much of the malware it would actually catch during the process.

What Is Avast Extension Necessary For Mac And Cheese

Most antivirus programs–or “security suites”, as they call themselves–want you to install their browser extensions. They promise these toolbars will help keep you safe online, but they usually just exist to make the company some money. Worse yet, these extensions are often hideously vulnerable to attack.

Remove virus from Mac with Avast Mac Security 2015 (Antivirus) free software including detailed instructions to check your Mac for viruses and adware. • Collects data about phishing sites and warns you if necessary. Avast Online Security Extension – Mozilla Firefox. About The Author. More From This Author. Hi, I am Max.

Many antivirus toolbars are, at best, just rebranded Ask Toolbar extensions. They add a toolbar, change your search engine, and give you a new homepage. They may brand it as a “secure” search engine, but it’s really just about making the antivirus company money. But in some cases, they do more than that–and sometimes with unintended consequences.

Example 1: AVG Web TuneUP Broke Chrome’s Security

RELATED:Beware: Free Antivirus Isn’t Really Free Anymore

“AVG Web TuneUP” is installed when you install AVG antivirus. According to the Chrome Web Store, it has nearly 10 million users. AVG’s official description of the extension says it will “warn you of unsafe search results.”

Back in December, Google-employed security researcher Tavis Ormandy discovered that the extension adds a large number of new JavaScript APIs to Chrome when it’s installed and that “many of the APIs are broken.” Aside from exposing your entire browsing history to any website you visit, the extension offered many security holes for websites to easily execute arbitrary code on any computer with the extension installed.

“My concern is that your security software is disabling web security for 9 million Chrome users, apparently so that you can hijack search settings and the new tab page,” he wrote to AVG. “I hope the severity of this issue is clear to you, fixing it should be your highest priority.”

Four days after it was reported, AVG had a patch. As Ormandy wrote: “AVG submitted an extension with a “fix”, but the fix was obviously incorrect.” He had to provide instructions for how to fix this flaw, and AVG issued an updated patch a day later. The fix restricts the functions to two specific AVG domains, but, as Ormandy noted, the websites on those domains have their own flaws that opens users up to attack.

Not only did AVG ship a browser extension with obviously broken, shoddy, insecure code, but AVG’s developers couldn’t even fix the problem without having their hands held by a Google security researcher. Hopefully, the browser extensions are being developed by a different team and the real experts are working on the antivirus software itself–but that’s a good example of how those antivirus browser extensions can go from useless to harmful.

Example 2: McAfee and Norton Don’t Think Microsoft Edge Is Secure (Because It Doesn’t Support Their Add-On)

If you’ve been following the development of Microsoft Edge for Windows 10, you’ll know that it’s supposed to be a more secure web browser than Internet Explorer. It runs in a sandbox and abandons support for old, insecure plug-in technologies like ActiveX. It has a more streamlined codebase and a variety of other improvements, such as protection against “binary injection,” where other programs inject code into the Microsoft Edge process.

And yet, McAfee–which is even installed by default on many new Windows 10 PCs–really doesn’t want you to use Microsoft Edge. Instead, McAfee recommends you use Internet Explorer, and will helpfully remove Edge from your taskbar and pin Internet Explorer there if you let it. All so you can keep using the McAfee browser extension.

Even if that browser extension helped keep you secure a little bit–something we don’t really believe–you’d be much better off with the improved security in Microsoft Edge. Norton does something similar, recommending you use a “supported browser” like Internet Explorer on Windows 10.

Thankfully, Microsoft Edge will soon support Chrome-style browser extensions. And when it does, McAfee and Norton can force their browser extensions on Edge users and stop redirecting them to the old-and-out-of-date-IE.

Example 3: Avast’s Online Security Extension Once Included Ads and Tracking

RELATED:Avast Antivirus Was Spying On You with Adware (Until This Week)

Here’s one we’ve covered before: Avast installs an “Avast! Online Security” browser extension when you install the main security suite, and they later added a feature named “SafePrice” to the extension in an update. This feature was enabled by default, and it displayed online shopping recommendations–in other words, ads that presumably make Avast money when you click them–as you browse.

To do this, it assigned you a unique tracking ID and sent every single web page you visited to Avast’s servers, associated with that unique ID. In other words, Avast tracked all your web browsing and used it to show ads. Thankfully, Avast eventually removed SafePrice from its main browser extension. But antivirus companies clearly see their “security” extensions as an opportunity to dig deep into the browser and show you ads (or “product recommendations”), not just a way to keep you secure.

It’s Not Just Browser Extensions: You Should Disable Other Browser Integrations, Too

Download Avast Extension

Srsly Avast? If you're gonna mitm chrome's SSL at least get an intern to skim your X.509 parsing before shipping it. pic.twitter.com/1zA1E0qnuo

— Tavis Ormandy (@taviso) September 25, 2015

Extensions are just part of the problem. Any form of browser integration can create security holes. Antivirus programs often want to monitor all your network traffic and inspect it, but they can’t normally see what’s happening inside an encrypted connection, like the one you use to access your email, or bank, or Facebook. After all, that’s the point of encryption–to keep that traffic private. To get around this limitation, some antivirus programs effectively perform a “man-in-the-middle” attack so they can monitor what’s actually going on over an encrypted connection. These work an awful lot like Superfish, replacing certificates with the antivirus’s own. The MalwareBytes blog explained avast!’s behavior here.

This feature is generally just an option in the antivirus program itself, and not part of a browser extension, but it’s worth discussing all the same. For example, Avast’s SSL-interception code contained an easily exploitable security hole that could be used by a malicious server. “At least get an intern to skim your [code] before shipping it,” tweeted Ormandy after discovering the problem. It’s one of those bugs that Avast, a security company, should have caught before shipping it to users.

As he argued in following tweets, this sort of man-in-the-middle code just adds more “attack surface” to the browser, giving malicious sites another way to attack you. Even if the developers of your security program are more careful, features that tamper with your browser are a lot of risk for not much reward. Your browser already contains anti-malware and anti-phishing features, and search engines like Google and Bing already attempt to identify dangerous websites and avoid sending you there.

You Don’t Need These Features, So Disable Them

Here’s the thing: even barring the above issues, these browser extensions are still unnecessary.

Most of these antivirus products promise to make you more secure online by blocking bad websites, and identifying bad search results. But search engines like Google already do this by default, and phishing and malware page filters are built into Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft’s web browsers. Your browser can handle itself.

So whatever antivirus program you use, don’t install the browser extension. If you already installed it or weren’t given a choice (many install their extensions by default), visit the Extensions, Add-ons, or Plug-ins page in your web browser and disable any extensions associated with your security suite. If your antivirus program has some sort of “browser integration” that breaks the way basic SSL encryption is supposed to work, you should probably disable that feature too.

Interestingly enough, Ormandy–who’s found a variety of security holes in many, many different antivirus programs–ends up recommending Microsoft’s Windows Defender, stating that it’s “not a complete mess” and “has a reasonably competent security team.” While Windows Defender certainly has its flaws, at least it doesn’t attempt to insert itself into the browser with these additional features.

Of course, if you want to use a more powerful antivirus program than Windows Defender, you don’t need its browser features to stay secure. So if you download another free antivirus program, be sure to disable its browser features and extensions. Your antivirus can keep you safe from malicious files you might download and attacks on your web browser without those integrations.

Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac

Platform: OS X (10.4+)
Price: Free
Download Page

Features

Compact, easy-to-use interface that can be used for custom on-demand scans of files, folders, and drives, or scheduled, periodic full scans of your Mac.
Also scans files on your Mac for known Windows malware, trojans, and viruses, and deletes or quarantines them so you don't risk spreading them to someone else via network share, USB drive, or email.
Deletes or quarantines known threats, gives you the option to quarantine anything suspicious that may be a new threat or dangerous file.
Runs quietly in the background, scanning emails, downloads, and any other files on access, stopping you from opening them before they can do any harm.
Light on system resources while running in the background.
Installs like any other Mac application, and uninstalls just as easily—no complicated packages or components to manage or configure.
Sophos' 'Live Antivirus' feature updates your app the moment new threats are detected or found in the wild. The feature also performs real-time lookups to see if files accessed are in the SophosLabs database, even if they're unfamiliar to the app.
Supports OS X up to 10.8 and back to 10.4, and is completely free for all versions.

Where It Excels

Sophos actually has an excellent breakdown of the history of malware for the Mac going all the way back to 1982. The fact that the article exists should remind Mac users that while they're not the primary target for malware authors, they're by no means invulnerable. The size of the article however should issue some confidence that the risk—while present—is by no means critical.

Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac stands out in a somewhat crowded field of Mac antivirus apps because it doesn't just scan your Mac's files and folders on demand, but it does it quietly in the background without tapping your already precious system resources in the process. The utility also keeps its own constantly-updating database of Windows viruses, trojans, and other threats, so if you inadvertently download a Windows virus or trojan that won't harm you, you don't run the risk of sending it off to someone else by forwarding the message, or you won't infect other computers on your network (or any Windows partitions or virtual machines you run on the same hardware) via shared drives. Sophos is smart enough to tell you 'Hey, this won't hurt you, but we're going to quarantine/delete it so you don't accidentally email this attachment to someone else.' That's a huge benefit—and it keeps you from being that guy no one likes.

Another banner feature Sophos offers that its competition doesn't is its live, real-time access to SophosLabs. 'Live Antivirus,' as it's called in the app, gives you an added layer of protection. The app automatically identifies and quarantines suspicious files, installers, and other packages that may not be well known threats yet, but definitely exhibit behavior suspicious enough that Sophos is looking into them.

Best of all though, in our testing, Sophos was one of the most resource-light antivirus apps on the Mac, which is impressive considering the features it offers.

Where It Falls Short

Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac isn't perfect, however. Even though it's pretty resource light, it wasn't the lightest in our tests. It just hit the sweet spot between resources and features. Also, support for Mountain Lion came a few months after its launch, so Sophos wasn't exactly right there with those people who upgraded on launch day.

The Competition

ClamXav 2 uses the open source ClamAV virus scanning engine. It can also detect both WIndows and OS X malware, scan on demand or on a regular schedule, and it's probably a bit more lightweight and easy on system resources than Sophos. It's compatible with OS X 10.5 or higher. The only trouble with ClamXav is that its definitions come a bit more sporadically than we'd like (daily, usually, sometimes, if they feel like it) and while performing scans is easy, tweaking all of the settings and getting the app scanning proactively is a little more effort than I'd like to see. Still, it's an excellent alternative, and one of the first you should check out if Sophos isn't cutting it for you.

Avast! Free Antivirus for Mac is the Mac version of our current favorite for Windows, and for good reason. The researchers at AV Comparitives found that Avast detected 100% of the Mac malware that went through it, an honor that few other utilities won (they didn't test Sophos, unfortunately). It's free, it works, it's lightweight, but the only catch is that it only scans for Mac-specific malware, which won't matter to you if you're in an all-Mac ecosystem, but if you, like most of us, share the world with Windows users, thinking of them doesn't hurt.

Avira is another free utility worth a look. It also picked up 100% of the Mac malware that passed through it with no false positives. Avira's UI and options are perfect for non-technical users, and it offers strong protection against known Mac threats. Again, there's no Windows protection in the app, and both the scheduling and custom scan options are a bit anemic, so power users may want to shy away from it. If you're installing it on your non-technical friend or family-member's Mac however, it's a great option.

For more suggestions, make sure to check out AV Comparitives' full 2012 report on Mac antivirus tools—there are more in there we didn't list here.

We're not trying and settle the antivirus-versus-no-antivirus debate; it's been raging for years and isn't going to stop now. For a great and thorough perspective on the issue, check out my old colleague Neil Rubenking's take at PC Mag's SecurityWatch blog, and The Safe Mac's approach to the topic.

Whatever you do though, it's probably not necessary to plop down money for a Mac antivirus suite. The threats don't warrant you dropping money on software to keep you safe, and too many of them do more harm than good (especially the ones looking to get your money). They're just not worth it, especially when there are more effective, robust, free options like the ones above available to you.