Kaspersky Labs released 2010 versions (v9.0) of their Anti Virus (KAV) and Internet Security (KIS) products just a few days ago. Since I’ve never used KIS, I’d rather not comment about the product here. KAV on the other hand has been watching my back for the past year or so and has done an excellent job at defending my computer against all sorts of malware on and off the net. Kaspersky Anti Virus 2010 comes with major new features such as an IM Anti-Virus, a revamped user interface, privacy cleaner and lots of enhancements to existing features. And if you were a pirate who used to activate Kaspersky using .KEY files found on warez sites, you’ll be in for a little shock as well.
I’m not really sure but it seems the developers managed to seriously optimize the memory resident scanner module of KAV (avp.exe). It used to take around 24MB of physical memory with KAV 8.0 (version 2009) and now it takes only around 12MB most of the time ( sometimes the memory consumptions goes as low as 5MB ). Anyways I might be wrong as this claim is not based on any long term observations - I’ve only used this app for around 15 mins by the time this post is being written.
What about pirates?
It is no secret that Kaspersky, being one of the most popular security product in the world, is heavily pirated (after the trial period expires the application continues to function – however new definition updates are not received). There are no cracks or cracked versions of the product itself but pirated serial keys can be found almost anywhere on the net. Hell, there are even automated key finders as well as sites with daily updated keys. Up until now, the primary method pirates used to activate this product is to open the license section of the app, choose ‘activate using the .key file option’ and then point to the pirated key file downloaded from the internet.
Here is a shocker – version 2010 does not have the ‘Activate Using Key File’ option. When you launch the License Manager in KAV 2010, you will either be asked to ‘purchase new license’ or ‘activate new license' – both of which will NOT prompt for a key file. So is this truly the end for ‘key file pirates’? Not really. If you disconnect from the internet, delete the trial license and then try to use the ‘activate trial license’ option again the program will try to connect to internet and fail. Upon failure, it’ll give the good old ‘activate using key file’ option where pirates can use even a KAV 8 key to illegally activate the application.
Download
We’ve provided direct download links below for the TRIAL version of Kaspersky Anti Virus 2010 Final build – no E-mail registration is required.
[Click Here] to download Kaspersky Anti Virus 2010 version 9.0.0.459 Final from official server
If you are one of our readers from Sri Lanka, you can actually purchase a genuine version of KIS with a one year subscription for as low as LKR 1800 (that’s around $16). You don’t even have to go to the dealer to make the purchase as it’s available in most IT related shops in the country. This way there would be no messing about with blacklisted keys for at least an year :) (Thanks to ‘leyland’ for the info)
Note: Do not post links to key files, key finders or anything of that sort here. This post is purely for informational purposes.
