One More Antivirus Proves Us That We're Not Safe

Although I believe we don't need any evidence that our computers are not safe anymore, another antivirus solution joins the list of the vulnerable applications making our systems opened to attacks. This time, the vulnerable program is Avira AntiVir, a security solution that was designed to fight against viruses, malware files, spyware and other threats. Security company Secunia rated the flaw as highly critical adding that the affected versions are Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Classic 7.x, Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Premium 7.x, Avira AntiVir Premium Security Suite 7.x, Avira AntiVir Server 6.x, Avira AntiVir UNIX MailGate 2.x and Avira AntiVir Workstation 7.x.

"An error when processing LZH files can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow via a specially crafted LZH file. Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code. A divide-by-zero error when processing UPX-compressed files can be exploited to crash the application via a specially crafted UPX-compressed file. An error when processing TAR files can be exploited to cause an infinite loop consuming available CPU resources," Secunia sustained.

The solution is to update the AVPack to version 7.03.00.09 and the engine to the 7.04.00.24 version. However, you are advised to keep your auto-update feature enabled because the antivirus solution needs up-to-date virus definitions to discover and block all the threats.

In the past, most of the famous antiviruses were affected by more or less critical security flaws that opened our computers and made them vulnerable to attacks. No matter if it was NOD32, Symantec Norton Antivirus, Kaspersky Antivirus or BitDefender, most of the antivirus products were vulnerable to attacks and, instead of making our computer more secure to attacks, they are causing several problems. That's why it is recommended to remain secure by avoiding visiting untrusted websites or unknown files.[via]