White Lists Hosts Entries - Please, Thank You!

Bitdefender comments out entries in the windows HOSTS file (c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) with a #

As numerous people report this on the internet,

As I can find the issue several times, in different languages on your own forums here, with people not being given a straight answer even after INSISTING on updates and not getting an answer

I am assuming:

- it is NOT POSSIBLE in the product to white list YOUR OWN changes to the windows HOSTS file

- there is no functionality to WHITE LIST your changes so they don't get commented out

- developers do not have this item on their priority list (you can find documentation of the first report almost 6 years ago now on the internet)

So, instead of you pretending not to know about this, and using the "silent" treatment on your customers:

can you find it in your heart to be honest, and say "sorry, we did not include this functionality because of the security issues that are related to it, and we prefer to keep you safe instead of having the convenience of changing the hosts file, until we add a whitelist functionality to our product".

So consider this a request for a white list feature to the hosts file.

The reason I ask instead of changing to another product, is because Bitdefender is an awesome product, and I don't want to change to another security suite for the 4th time.

Thank you for understanding. And for not removing my post.

Kind regards,

Stef

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Comments

glide3

I have to agree with this feature request from Stef.

As a developer I often use the hosts file, as I would on a linux server, as a shortcut to my test web servers I am working on.

I often have VirtualBox machines that I would prefer to avoid installing named or dnsmasq on and pointing my Windows dev box dns to. The hosts file was a very convenient place to teach windows/chrome etc. where something was, and change it on the fly.

Another useful tool was to use Hostsman by Abelhadigital.com to backup / control the hosts file.

Security is clearly a issue with the hosts file. So if we cannot edit it directly for security reasons give us a whitelist that bitdefender controls. Put bitdefender in charge of the hosts file writing. Give us a user interface to control the hosts file through Bitdefender.

Avira offered a checkbox for advanced users to allow editing of the hosts file at least.

Kind regards

Rory

Sorin G.

You can always disable the feature by going to Bitdefender > General Settings > Advanced and disabling Scan Hosts File.

stefc

I have found another solution on the forums which includes putting the file in read-only. This way the contents of the file is no longer changed. If you want to change it yourself, just remove the read-only from the properties of the file and change it back afterwards.

Scanning is no longer necessary because the file is in read-only and can't be changed.

The only thing I'm wondering; if theree are malware links in there, will they be detected and will you get an alarm? Or will it only remove manually added links in there without caring what they are?