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AVG Fakes User Agent, Floods the Internet
Slimy anti-virus provider AVG is spamming the internet with deceptive traffic pretending to be Internet Explorer. Essentially, users of the software automatically pre-crawl search results, which is bad, but they do so with an intentionally generic user agent. This is flooding websites with meaningless traffic (on Slashdot, we're seeing them as like 6% of our page traffic now). Best of all, they change their UA to avoid being filtered by websites who are seeing massive increases in bandwidth from worthless robots.
For anyone that happens to run a site behind an F5 BigIP, here's a nice little IRule to nuke this horrible crap from orbit.
rule IRULE_block_avg-prefetch { ::avg_useragents [list \
when HTTP_REQUEST {
set
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)" \
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;1813)" \
"User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)" \
"User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;1813)" \
]
if { ![HTTP::header exists "Accept-Encoding"] } {
if { [matchclass [HTTP::header User-Agent] equals $::avg_useragents] } {
reject
}
}
}
- U
Avira.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Why don't you tell us how you really feel about AVG?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
A couple months ago, a random article on my company's site got around 20 times the number of hits that the top story of the day should be getting. I checked the logs, and saw legit-looking IE user agents, but they didnt look normal. None of them had any cookies, and none of them were downloading the CSS or image files that they should have been. The IP addresses were from all around the world. WTF?
I found out that Google was doing one of its things where it changes the google logo for some special occasion, and it links to a search. That article was on the first page of the results.
I did a search for the exact user agent and discovered it was AVG. When you go to a Google search, AVG downloads each result looking for malware. Hooray for falsified user agents.
Though, I suspect the reason they use a legit-looking IE user agent is because malware sites could sniff the AVG user agent and serve up an innocent page for them, and malware for everyone else.
I use AVG on a couple machines. I didn't really think about the traffic tracking piece of this when I saw it working, I just thought about it slowing me down, increasing bandwidth use, etc. and I turned it off.
I know most people don't mess with defaults - and I'm not defending them as far as the agent thing and all that - but it was easy to do.
On the negative side my avg icon in the systray has a big exclamation over it like something is really wrong - when I know it's just because I turned off a piece of functionality I don't want to use.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Hooray look at all the hits I'm getting.
I bet AVG would score higher on ACID than IE...
if you want the definition of Slimey see Symantec/Mcafee/MicrosoftOneCare
while this doesnt excuse their behaviour, trying to protect people (a lot of them for free) is not Slimey but insulting them on the front page of Slashdot is
pathetic> on Slashdot, we're seeing them as like 6% of our page traffic now
Come on Taco... proper English (or at least something seemingly like it) isn't that hard... is 6% exactly, around 6% or really just 'like 6%'
I honestly like, do not recall like the last time I like, saw someone use 'like' in that long standing improper way in like text, it's always like, been for me, like only something a person like, verbalizes.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
So if AVG has turned to the dark side, what free/cheap non-bloatware options are out there worth trusting? I know of a few but it's a little hard to know who to trust.
Seems like every anti-malware software maker these days bloats their software into a 50+MB beast of a package that accomplishes little more than to slow your computer down. I have more trouble with their software than I do with actual mal-ware.
Try this on Apache servers:
#Here we assume certain MSIE 6.0 agents are from linkscanner
#redirect these requests back to avg in the hope they'll see their silliness
Rewritecond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ".*MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1.$" [OR]
Rewritecond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ".*MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;1813.$"
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} ^$
RewriteRule ^.* http://www.avg.com/?LinkScannerSucks [R=307,L]
Brought to you by These guys.
....used to fake user agents all the time. As a man I thought I was always properly connecting to her internet portal. guess not.
AVG was once a good product. Then, it got bloated and started eating up kernel memory voraciously. It was impossible to play games with it running in the background, especially Crysis (skip the jokes, my system could handle it maxed once I replaced AVG with Avast!). Now, with this development, I'll be sure to replace AVG with Avast! on all of my machines, not just my gaming one.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Smiley anti-virus provider? The integrity of Slashdot submissions just keeps going up and up! Nice example Taco.
Must be a slow news day...This story's been around for nearly 2 weeks. AVG will probably keep changing the useragent with every few updates to annoy Admins and stats sites...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Is many years I've never heard AVG referred to as "Slimey" I don't think the toolbar is a good idea either but... slimey? AVG is awesome.
You need explicit permission to access a public website now? Shit! I'd better get offline and write an apology to CmdrTaco - I've been using /. without permission for the best part of a decade!
Time to post a specific statement on all websites stating that AVG does NOT have consent to access or "visit" these websites.
That's a bit like putting up a 'No Trespassing' sign inside your cellar, and expecting it to prevent people coming over your fence.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
LinkScanner, the component they're talking about, works in Firefox as well - so no, using Firefox does not 'keep you safe'.
Nor is this about the users of the thing in the first place - either they like its functionality (security theatre-advance warning blabla) and leave it on, or they don't and they switch it off.
This is about the poor, poor admins who are suddenly seeing bogus traffic and omgosh it's spoofing user agents at that! .. repeatedly*
*changes his user agent to 'cry more, Taco' in FF and hits F5
no your not a lawyer, but i'm pretty sure your not smart enough to be one either.
you didn't give them permission to access your publicly available site?
really?
are you sure?
because you know, if you make something publicly available on the public internet, I'm pretty sure by definition, you've therefore given them permission to access it.
Just like everyone else "in the public".
Did you give Google permission?
how about every other search/index site?
as to the "extra bandwidth" since it is by definition, caused by your websites being found via search providers, maybe you should be sending the bill for linking to them and thus causing the "extra bandwidth" to Google/Yahoo/MS and see how far that gets you.
You can actually install AVG 8 without the 'Safe Search' feature that crawls websites (it's essentially a BHO/Firefox extension). Even if you already have AVG 8, you can uninstall it and reinstall:
At a Command Prompt window, type /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch
c:\downloads\avg_free_stf_xxxxxxxxxx.exe
where c:\downloads\avg_free_stf_xxxxxxxxxx.exe is the full path of your AVG 8 installer.
Go somewhere random
Has anyone else noticed that AVG 8 is also DOG SLOW on their PC? My computer is from 2001 and ran fine with 7.5, but 8.0 is unusably slow. Every time an application is opened it takes forever for AVG to scan it and let the app open. This combined with this linkscanner bullcrap has caused me to switch. I doubt I'll ever go back.
I've been using Avast! Home Edition for a while now, no complaints.
I'm a longtime user of AVG. Version 7 was reasonably lightweight, effective and (most importantly to me) unobtrusive.
Unfortunately, version 8 is a different story. After Grisoft forced me to upgrade in May, suddenly AVG became a nagging resource hog. Nightly scan times rocketed from about an hour to over six hours - a scheduled scan that started at 2am would still be going at 8:30am. I have been able to reduce this time somewhat by changing the scan settings (e.g., don't scan inside compressed archives), but it's still slow.
Most annoyingly, their new "LinkScanner" and "SafeSurf" features slowed my browser to a crawl. I didn't want these, since I already use FireFox with the AdBlock and NoScript extensions. I tried to simply disable LinkScanner, but then AVG constantly bothered me with nagging warnings that my computer "was not fully protected". After a little digging, I found that it was possible to uninstall the feature entirely with the following command:
avg_free_stf_xxxx.exe /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch
(Substitute "avg_free_stf_xxxx.exe" in the above command with the name of your setup file.)
This improved my browser performance, and eliminated the warnings.
I'm still (grudgingly) using AVG, but I will switch if/when I find a better alternative.
It's not really the load -- it's throwing off our internal metrics so we don't know what readers are actually interested in. We like numbers, and messing with our stats annoys us.
When probing for sites that serve malware, wouldn't you have to make the probe look identical to a legitimate user?
Otherwise the malicious site could just serve innocuous content to the probe and malware to everyone else.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
How exactly do the websites getting slammed with this bullshit traffic "not even install this part of the program" and "if you don't like it don't use it"?
Did you miss this part: (on Slashdot, we're seeing them as like 6% of our page traffic now)
So how does Slashdot "just not use" the AVG product and recover that 6% of their page traffic again?
The complaint is that they are "spamming the internet with deceptive traffic". That's a server/hosting complaint, not a user complaint about some user who can't figure out how to disable that feature.
Kudos on getting a "4 Insightful" for a ridiculously inapplicable and nonsensical response though!
avast! antivirus Home Edition is FREE to use but it is necessary to register before the end of the initial 60 day trial period. To register, click here. Following registration you will receive by E-mail a license key valid for a period of 1 year. After you have downloaded and installed the program, the license key must be inserted into it within 60 days. The registration process is very easy, and it will take you only a couple of minutes.
Also Avira has been getting more and more annoying over the years, it's practically adware now.
So now it looks like it's either AVG with the browser plugins removed or MoonAV (which is FOSS):
http://www.moonsecure.com/
(It used to have a problem where you'd need to remove the Windows service manually after uninstalling, they might have fixed it though.)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Shouldn't it be avg_free_stfu_xxxx.exe ??
I love AVG for the free scanner it provides but ...
Safesearch: It doesn't work.
Somehow I ended up on one of those "Your computer is infected..." sites
while trying to dl their crap. So for fun I went back to the referrer page
(google) and sure enough, it was marked as safe.
Hah! Checking my addons in FF3, and on AVG Safe Search 8 it says "Not compatible with Firefox 3.0". Awesome :-)
And with AVG, I'm becoming a little less paranoid with websites
That is, you're reducing your security because you believe AVG is providing you valid information about the reliability of websites.
I installed AVG on my mother-in-law's machine because she had an expired trial version of some other AV software. It was great for a while, but they must've had a change in direction/managment. Because all of a sudden they started with popups to get a full paid version of the software - even uninstalling the product didn't fix it. I had to surgically extract crap from the registry and program files folder to finally get rid of it. Avast or ClamWin for me - no more AVG.
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
I think I missed the memo - why is AVG a "Slimy anti-virus provider"? That portion of the summary BEGS for supporting links...
Be careful of your thoughts; they could become words at any minute...
And if that causes problems for webmasters, Thompson says, so be it. "I don't want to sound flip about this, but if you want to make omelets, you have to break some eggs."
Sounds like a "fuck off" to me.
I guess slimy is in the eye of the beholder, but the attitude reminds me of Claria.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
These guys rock! Free life-time license, etc... Small footprint and easy to use. http://www.comodo.com/
so we don't know what readers are actually interested in
Porn. Anime. Sometimes computers.
Hope that alleviates your concerns.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I wonder if this AVG behaviour of doing prefetch on linked sites is driving up advertising clicks at all?
Could AVG be unintentionally committing massive click fraud?
Wow. Just wow. You managed to make an ends-justify-the-means argument, a false dichotomy, a red herring, and probably a few other fallacies I missed because I was already laughing so hard.
AVG is breaking two key rules of good app behavior on the internet: they are making huge numbers of requests that users don't want or know about, and they are providing fraudulent info in the request headers to prevent affected services from mitigating the problem.
How many companies write internet-enabled apps? What do you think? 1000? 10000? 100000? If AVG's behavior here is OK, is it also OK for all of those other apps to pile on as well, each one adding another 6% of overhead to *the entire internet*? Or is AVG special for some reason that allows them to play by different rules than everyone else?
This is very abusive on AVG's part, and your spirited defense relies on logical fallacies and hand waving. Your "if you don't want AVG to eat bandwidth and lie about its useragent, you must want your users to be infected with malware" bit is just icing on the cake.
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
While all other /.ers are complaining that ClamWin is useless I want to bring some points :
- ClamWin has a built-in plug-in to scan incoming mail in outlook.
- ClamWin is easy to call from scripts and is a nice thing to add to the commands that are launched by your favourite bit-torrent client once a file is completed (I use this on my linux based torrent downloading/file server machine)
- ClamWin has plug-ins for FireFox : SafeDownload, Download Scan, Download Statusbar all let you launch the scanner of your choosing once a download finishes. ClamWin Antivirus Glue is another solution, but one has to manually update the minimal supported version (the plugin is set to support up to 1.5 although it works with more modern versions).
So, although ClamWin isn't continuously scanning in background, it can cover most of the usual entry points. (Although I don't know about plugins for Thunderbird and Microsoft file server).
For those who like to test newer bleeding edge software : WinPooch software can launch a scan when ever an executable is opened - it's almost as good as an on demand scanner.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I think you're missing the point: it scans links that users are not going to. It scans every result from a search, and not just the ones that you're browsing to. This significantly increases the traffic that sites have to deal with while not increasing user security at all, since the pages can just as easily be scanned while they are downloaded.
But maybe you're just trolling.
Also AVG are not slimly, the spyware/trojan/malware site operators are
However, I'd argue it's the equivalent of using a flamethrower to take out a wasp's nest - the amount of collateral damage to non-malware sites due to the spurious pulls is excessive, there are cleaner methods available.
I don't read AC A human right
How long before someone gets fired or arrested, and tries to explain that it was their anti-virus software that was viewing the child pr0n?
Are users not supposed to protect themselves in the interests of the website?
This isn't being done to protect users. The pages could be scanned just as easily on actual load. This is being done to prevent the users from having to suffer a small delay on loading the page by preloading it (and every other possibly link on the page since the software doesn't know what link you're going to click).
You're just putting spin on the issue because this is affecting your cost/income ratio.
You're very anti-average Joe. Most of us aren't Amazon. Most of us, in fact, make precisely zero income from our websites. And we don't have the kind of financial resources to deal with this kind of distributed attack on our bandwidth. Amazon, Yahoo, and such won't have any problem dealing with this sort of thing, but if it becomes popular, it'll force the rest of us off the web.
Since the problem of malware sites is not going to go away and since AVG is effective more antivirus software will start using these techniques. Unless you have something better to suggest?
Yes, make the user wait the extra second if the user wants to scan a page.
Frankly, as an end user, I don't give a damn about your costs and stats. I don't care about it for amazon, ebay, myspace, or paypal. I do care that if I follow a link to an unsavory site that I am protected.
If that's true, then you won't mind waiting the extra second to load a page instead of having the browser drag down the bandwidth of every site in your search ahead of time for you.
Here is another question. Do you want a userbase that is populated by malware infected computers? Is that preferable to figuring out a way to work with AVG new technique?
That's a false dilemma. Is it preferable to force everyone other than the big guys off the web so that users don't have to wait an extra second on loading a page?
Dont throw your users under the train. They have a right to their security and peace of mind.
Don't throw the majority of web page publishers under a train, just so you can save a second by preloading a page.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
If you right-click on a component in the AVG User Interface, you can select 'Ignore Component State'. That way the component is turned off, but the AVG icon doesn't show anything wrong.
Hope this helps...