a-squared Anti-Malware 5.0 - Beta 9

ray1106

Hi guys,

we decided to publish the latest build 9 of a-squared Anti-Malware 5.0 here before putting it into public beta within the next 12 hours. Maybe you guys will find a bug that slipped through .

http://tmp.emsisoft.com/a2/a2antimalwarebeta9.rar

You may notice the missing red and bold disclaimer. The last builds were pretty stable and we feel comfortable enough to move the beta into public. Please read this posting more careful than the others because some text actually has changed.

What has changed compared to the previous build?

Added shutdown on scan end feature to custom scans

Fixed menu animation bug

Scans can now be paused again

"Scan now" button will use the integrated scanner instead of the old stand alone one

Removed a few code paths from the old scanner that resulted in a2start.exe executions although they are no longer necessary


How install the test build?
Since we do plan to release this build as a public beta please try to simulate a beta update. This can be done by following this steps:

Uninstall a-squared Anti-Malware and removing all left over traces.

Install a-squared Anti-Malware again, activate beta updates and update to the latest public beta version.

Close all active a-squared Anti-Malware components.

Stop the a-squared Anti-Malware service. You can either use the "services.msc" MMC applet provided by Windows or a simple "net stop a2antimalware" on a Windows command prompt.

Unpack the provided RAR archive to your installation folder (usually C:\Program Files\a-squared Anti-Malware). Be sure to replace all current files with the ones from the archive.

Start a-squared as usual. If you get a prompt about invalid file versions please deactivate the check in the future and skip the online update.

As always: If you don't have a valid license or a valid trial version feel free to drop me a message.

On-access scanning
Currently the feature includes several scanning modes:

Scan only programs before they are executed
This mode is an extended version of our OnExecution scan. It will scan files only if they are opened in a way that is typical for execution. It is unaffected by the extension filter settings. This will be the default setting in the future.

Additionally scan all files when they are created or changed.
This mode will do the same as above but additionally it scans files that were just created on your system or after they were changed. The scan for newly created and changed files will honor the extension filter if activated. This setting will essentially scan files once they arrive on your system but after that never again unless they get executed. If people really do want on-access scanning this will be the recommended setting.

Additionally scan all files when they are opened.
This mode will essentially scan every file you access. It will honor the extension filter if activated. This is the slowest mode since files are scanned when ever they are accessed and is not recommended for normal use.


What should be tested?

General performance impact of the different scan modes in day to day situations (browsing directories with many files, surfing, copying files, starting applications etc.). Benchmarks comparing impact of day to day operations in different modes are very welcome as well.

Check the default settings after a fresh installation. The File Guard should be set to on-execution scanning. The option to scan only files with specific extensions should be activated.

Run your every day applications to test the Malware-IDS compatibility. Try to run as many applications as you can. The more the better.

If you are using Vista or later with UAC enabled check if the elevation of applications is working correctly.

Abnormal system behavior. Please be sure to attach all kind of error reports and crash dumps (especially Minidumps) to your replies if your system crashes.

Are the options easy to understand? Do you miss a feature? Have we forgotten a critical extension to the default extension exclusion list? And of course all other feedback you may want to provide .


Target applications
Since we are targeting a public beta release we no longer need information about specific applications. We chose those kind of applications because they do produce a large amount of I/O to stress the file system filter. Since the file system filter passed all available MS test suites and there were no blue screens reported so far you don't have to focus your testing on specific applications. Instead try to test with as many applications as possible.

Known problems:

Due to a bug in the 3rd party bug reporting software we use it is possible to crash or deadlock our applications by taking ownership of a synchronization object. We proposed a fix to the vendor to address that problem which got accepted. The public release will include the fix.

Some people reported some random CPU spikes and general sloppiness when performing certain operations. We plan to address this issue during the public beta since we do believe a larger sample size would help to find the underlying cause of the problem.

Due to some new restrictions put on IE8 on Windows 7 with UAC enabled the surf protection doesn't work correctly unless you deactivate UAC.

Some events are not 100% finished. There is still some fine tuning to be done to increase security and decrease false positives.



And last but not least ... thank you for your feedback!

寒山竹语

这家伙速度真快。

juhone

赶快正式版吧

ray1106

正式版还早，我想在beta20左右

bukkake

还是比较期待的

ray1106

Added shutdown on scan end feature to custom scans

这一项我觉得是最大改变

juhone

正式版还早，我想在beta20左右
ray1106 发表于 2010-2-9 12:55

beta20啊，如果有的话，我还第一次能看到有beta20的软件呢？

runyon

A2 5又更新了，期待5.0

juhone

Added shutdown on scan end feature to custom scans

这一项我觉得是最大改变
ray1106 发表于 2010-2-9 12:59

这个功能很多杀软有的啊，但我从来不用，我要自己扫描的话不会不管让它自己关机的，既然是自定义扫描了一定是有问题了，当然就要看结果并处理，不是让它完成后关机的。

范特西、

期待正式版、
感谢分享