Antivirus companies cause a big headache to small developers.
Antivirus is essential tool that most people need to protect their Windows operating system from Viruses, Trojans, and other bad stuff.
Unfortunately, most Antivirus companies goes too far with their Virus/Trojan protection, and in many times they classify completely legit software as Virus/Trojan infection.
One good example for that is my own password recovery tools: Most people need these tools to recover their own lost password. These password tools, like many other utilities out there, can also be used by hackers for bad purposes.
The attitude of many Antivirus companies is very tough in this subject -
If it's a tool that can be used by bad guys, it's classified as Trojan or Virus, even when most users need it and use it for good purposes. Antivirus companies don't care that they block their own customers that want to recover their own passwords, and they don't care that they may cause their customer to think that I'm a Virus distributer.
I must say that some Antivirus companies are a little more gentle, and classify these tools as "Security Threat" or "Riskware" which is much better than classifying them as Virus or Trojan, but they still prevent the user from running them - by deleting them or by putting them in quarantine.
Also, many users don't know what is difference between Virus and Riskware, and when they get these "Riskware" alerts, they still think that my tools are infected with a Virus named "Riskware".
My password-recovery utilities are not the only victims of the "over protection" made by Antivirus software. Some other tools, like ProduKey, RegScanner, WebVideoCap, NirCmd, and others that don't recover any password, are still constantly targeted by Antivirus companies, without any known reason.
Other developers also have "False Positive" problems
Other small developers also constantly experience false alerts made by Antivirus software, here some examples:
- UBCD4Win - a great freeware Windows boot cd containing multiple tools that some of them are detected as malware: http://www.ubcd4win.com/faq.htm#false
- PortableApps is a great open source tool containing portable software package to run from USB flash drive, but also have some False Positive problems: http://portableapps.com/support
- AutoHotKey - Open source utility for creating mouse/keyboard macros.
Users of AutoHotKey constantly complains about false alerts from antivirus programs.
See the following links:
It's time to do something about these AutoHotkey antivirus false positives - RJL Software (Updated on 21/05) - Their programs are constantly detected as "Joke program". You can read about that here and also here. They also added a commend to this post, it's recommended to read it too.
- UPX False Positives - Kaspersky Lab Forum: User complains in Kaspersky forums about False Positives of tools compressed with UPX
What about large companies like Microsoft ?
Large companies usually don't have any false positives problems, and even if there is a single case of false alert, the antivirus company will probably fix it very soon. After all, antivirus companies know that Large companies have good lawyers and if they won't fix the problem, they may find themselves in a large lawsuit for libel.
One good example is SysInternals. In the past, their psexec.exe tool that can be used to execute code on remote machine, was detected as Virus by some Antivirus programs, but today, when SysInternals is a part of Microsoft, All Antiviruses show it's clean, as
you can see from this VirusTotal report.
Examples for emails I receive on daily basis
Here's some examples of messages regarding the virus alerts, that I get to my inbox on daily basis:
- "Your mspass.exe is infected with Virus"
"You have Trojan horse in your Mail PassView utility"
"your ProduKey is a Trojan, be ashamed !"These messages are sent by users that really think that my tools are infected. I cannot blame them for thinking that, because the Antivirus really tell them that there is an infection.
Most Antivirus programs don't explain the user that the alert is displayed only because it's a legitimated tool that might be used by hackers.
They simply tells the user that the tool is infected with Virus or trojan, even it's not really the truth. - "I try to run your program and it says that I don't have permission"
"I try to run your program, and I get the following message: 'Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permission to access the item'"
"I try to run your program, and nothing happen"
"Each time that I download your program and extract the files, the .exe file disappears"These messages are sent by users who think that there is a bug or problem with my utility, without knowing that this problem is actually caused by their Antivirus.
In some circumstances, the Antivirus software runs in the background, and when it detect a threat, it simply block the .exe file, put the file in quarantine, or simply delete it, without telling the user anything.
The frustrated user think that there is a problem in the software he tries to run, without knowing that the Antivirus software, that should protect his computer, is actually the troublemaker that causes this problem. - "When I try to get into utilities section of your site, I get 'the page cannot be displayed' error"
"You have a broken link in your site - When I try to download your ProduKey tool, I get 'the page cannot be displayed' error"These messages are sent by users who think that there is a problem in my Web site, because they cannot browse into a Web page in my site or download a utility from my site. But once again, this problem is caused by Antivirus or Firewall that decided to block my Web site without explaining the user about the site blocking.
Zonealarm products, as opposed to others, redirects the user into a Web page which says that "nirsoft.net has been known to distribute spyware", which is completely untrue.
This web page also offers to report about false detection to False_Positive@checkpoint.com. I really tried to do so, but I received the following error message from their email server:
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----(reason: 550 5.1.1 ... User unknown)
As you can see, Zonealarm provides an email to report about false positives, but it's a fake email address that nobody really reads.
instead of adding new features to my utilities and updating my site.
Why don't you contact the Antivirus companies ?
Some people ask me, "Why don't you simply contact the Antivirus companies to resolve the false alerts issues ?"
So here's some important points:
- There are dozens of Antivirus companies out there, and with combination of more than 100 utilities in my site, false alerts appears and disappears all the time. Handling all these false alerts may require an employee with full-time job, even more than that.
- If you look into the Web sites of some Antivirus companies, you'll easily find a large "Buy Now" button, but you probably won't find any "Report About False Positive" link. Antivirus companies always want to make more sells, but they don't really care about false positives in their products. They usually hide the option to report about false alert very deep in their Web site, and some of them gives "False Positive" support only for users that purchased their product.
- Even when I find the method to report about a false alert, deeply in their Web site, most of the companies don't answer the requests at all or simply send an automatic message, saying that the sample that I sent is infected. In some cases, The Antivirus company fix the false alert problem in their next update, but without admitting that they had a false positive, and without sending any apology to me, as a developer.
- False Positives usually come back: Even when Antivirus company finally fix a false positive, it's just a matter of time, until the false positive returns again, with a new Virus/Trojan name.
Help me and other developers !
If you feel frustrated, like me, about all these false alerts, you can help me and other small developers to stop Antivirus programs from detecting innocent tools as Viruses/Trojans.
What can you do ?
Here's some examples:
- Add your comments to this article about False Positives problems you experience (As user or as software developer)
- Send this post to your friends, so they'll know more about false positive problems.
- If you constantly pay for licenses and updates for your Antivirus software,
don't hesitate to call your Antivirus company and require them to stop the false alerts.
You pay for your Antivirus product, and you deserved to get a reliable product that detect only real viruses. - If you have any contact with large magazine writer/journalist, you may try to offer him to make a research and/or write an article about all false alerts problems made by Antivirus.
Unfortunately, some magazines will never write an article against the Antivirus companies, because these companies also pay for advertising in these magazines.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:48 am
I constantly experienced this problem of false positives. It's really crazy...
Even the "Kaspersky removal tool" is detected as a trojan by Mcafee. Lots of programs I need to monitor computer activity, or cleen malwarse are detected as trojan and it's really difficult to use them. And of course some of the Nirsoft programs that are my favorites.
But what can we do ? For me it's a further divide between two opposites conceptions of computering.
May 19th, 2009 at 8:48 am
My scripts in AutoIt (AutoHotkey is spinoff of it) get false positives all the time.
I understand that this is terrrible issue for developers with large portfolio of utilities.
Still as user - if specific malicious code is similar in legitimate app and malware I'd prefer it detected rather than not detected.
Overall it is one of those issues that don't have clear and easy solution. Antivirus developers are unlikely to cooperate on global scale and dealing with them case by case is impossible.
I hope you will (if not already) find convenient method of dealing with false positives feedback and it is not too much of discouragement.
May 19th, 2009 at 9:29 am
I agree this is a pain, whenever I plug in my thumb drive into another computer I find Norton happily deleting files from it for me. So now I tend to disable any AV before plugging it in (a lot easier).
May 19th, 2009 at 11:16 am
I also develop a little in VB6 on the rare occasion, once trying to write an update component into some custom software I wrote for a company I used to work for.
Unfortunately no matter how I tried, I couldn't find a way to code it without having it detected as trojan/downloader by at least Symantec. Even "excluding" the file in the software didn't work _for long_ and I was never able to find a way to report the issue to Symantec. Out of curiosity I checked and the file was also "infected" by McAfee or some other program they had at the time.
Was it the code itself, or that it was hard-coded for my domain, I dunno.
Surely the manpower for an anti-virus company doesn't allow to check all software. Maybe they come up with a few things to look for, like however my update code looks to their detection engine, then blanket this as a downloader trojan for all files scanned, and EXCLUDE the big software vendor's apps that could match this criteria.
Of course I also firmly believe most of them intentionally jack up the false positives (affecting primarily small developers) so they can boast higher detection rates.
And you are right, they justify this on the technicality that the software *could* be used maliciously.
But it doesn't mean they need to be so deceitful about the detection.
Also, the absolute worst part about a false positive, is that it trains the half-way competent user or even a computer tech to always disable the anti-virus when something like your password utility is being used...
...so what if that utility was infected by a real threat? Perhaps a computer tech who is retrieving a product key or password had something infect all the .exe's on the flash drive being used, what then?
May 19th, 2009 at 11:58 am
>Of course I also firmly believe most of them intentionally jack up the false positives (affecting primarily small developers) so they can boast higher detection rates.
Nope, high percentage of false positives is sign of low quality. All popular antivirus tests check that and count into their rankings (not that those are absolute and objective).
It's not intentional, just the way things work when it is hard to tell apart malicious code from legit.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
THANK YOU for posting this. I hope something is done about this. The "little" guys always get the shaft. We write "entertainment" software that is flagged as viruses by all of the major players. We've added FAQ topics, Discussion Forum posts and readme's to explain that our software is NOT a virus. In the end its killing our business, as users dont understand the different between Annoyware or Fun/Joke program vs. Viruses. We have contacted McAfee and Norton - but no luck. Here are some topics we've added (will provide a link back to this blog)
http://www.rjlsoftware.com/support/faq/sa.cfm?q=209&n=61
http://www.rjlsoftware.com/support/faq/sa.cfm?q=21&n=68
May 20th, 2009 at 4:23 am
The anti-virus system I use provides an email address to its registered users for reporting false positives.
I'm happy to report that *every* time I've submitted a file or URL to a download, I've received a response within eight hours that stated, "Thank you--we have investigated and determined this is a false positive, and it will be corrected in the next set of virus definitions."
May 20th, 2009 at 6:56 am
This used to drive me mad when i used to ask a client on the phone to install a remote connection application like teamviewer or aamy admin and it would get thrown straight into quarantine, which then required me to talk them through authorising it which with some clients who were not at all IT literate was a pain. Also had a few problems with F/P's with some of your tools but it would appear that Sophos (which i work with most) doesnt pick them up.
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:59 am
Well it has to be said, that if the users are so stupid that they cannot tell the difference between a legitimate program and a virus, then perhaps they shouldn't be using them.
I myself have really appreciated the software that you have put together and use it a lot. It helps me to irons out problems in networks and on hard drives.
Another issue is the general issue of the proliferation of antiviral programs. Perhaps the crappy ones need to be boycotted a little more with a good amount of blogging.
In the end, nothing beats good old fashion common sense and a bit of education.
Keep up the good work and invets in a mail filtering programme with a generic reply.
Another developer with similar issues...
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Avira Antivir 2009:
'SPR/Tool.KeyView' [riskware].
June 15th, 2009 at 7:07 am
"My scripts in AutoIt (AutoHotkey is spinoff of it) get false positives all the time.
I understand that this is terrrible issue for developers with large portfolio of utilities."
The same thing happens to me... I think Jon (AutoIt Developer) said that the main autoit interpreter was classified as a virus, so almost any script made with AutoIt will also be classified as one, as it includes it.
He is trying to work with the security software providers to sort out how to detect autoit programs as viruses, so hopefully...
June 15th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
hi. i'm service engineer and founder of usetools.net project about free software.
experiments and test based on real practical usage show that antivirus software applications become more and more useless, consume the great amount of pc hardware resources (sometimes users cant use their workstation beacause of single program with service purpose - "antivirus"), often damage users or system software ("false positives") and even can destroy system completly without any reason.
so lets determine what are the main features of virus-like (trash, harmful, dangerous, etc.) software:
1. consuming more or less system resources like memory and cpu for running them self without any possible users control;
2. creating a lot of startup items represented by executables in system registry run-sections or creating one or much more services;
3. allways updating, downloading something and uploading some data about local system thus sometimes consuming a lot of internet traffic;
4. show various information like annying commercial advertisments;
5. providing remote access to users workstation.
so, mentioned above is about viruses and... the first of all and largly about commercial antiviruses that use these methodes for getting more and more profit without real thinking about end-users or software developers.
besides that computers and networking service job experience shows that in most cases when real viruses presents in system antivirus programs can do nothing. no detection or no real helpful action in case of detection. thus popular commercial antiviruses are absolutly useless in most cases and even dangerous in some cases.
the most evil commercial products according to service engineering experience are: avg, nod32, avp (kaspersky), threatfire.
the most trully useful and really powerful solution is clamav scanner cause it never lies (cause that is free and open source software) and nowadays has great virus detection level.
it has now "monitor" but that is advantage cause when antivirus monitor works that mean antivirus monitor works on your pc but not you. to control system in real time security task manager can be used like anvir (freeware). for networking security real network firewall can be used like ghostwall (freeware). all that tools must be preconfigured and used all together as one security solution that virus problem can be solved without bying other super-viruses that have the single aim to get your money and thats all.
thank you nir, for your the greatest free software tools.
the are often used in our free software project cause they are extremly useful!
have a nice day!
June 16th, 2009 at 2:07 am
I work as an IT Tech Support rep at a software company. Our software uses Microsoft SQL Server as its database. Over the past year Mcafee has been a horrible problem for us. It seems they block the SQL server right out of the box. You have to buy their higher corporate version in order to not have it happen. Our clients are constantly getting an invalid database connection, because the DB is blocked. What makes it unsafe. It requires the use of two ports to communicate. Firewalls and spyware companies seem to have taken over the computers. They slow them down, and often don't catch half of what is actually spyware and viruses. It's sad, but I find it easier and safer to run without all that junk running all the time. I have found other ways to be preventative.
July 24th, 2009 at 2:40 am
Which AV companies are best/worst in this respect?
I assume that McAfee and Norton/Symantec are terrible. But what about the rest: Grisoft AVG, Avast!, AntiVir, BitDefender, Kaspersky, etc.? Are any of them reasonably responsive to false-positive reports?
I have some AV recommendations on my web site, and I'd like to add this info to it:
http://www.geeksalive.com/links.html
Thanks,
Dave Burton
Geeks Alive! Computer Rescue
Burton Systems Software
Cary, NC USA
http://www.burtonsys.com/email/
-----
Hey, Nir, do you know that your blogger comment-posting system is broken?
I tried six web browsers. Only one of them works.
In Firefox 3.0.5, Safari 3.2.3, Chrome 2.0.172.37, and IE 8 under XP Pro, after I select my TypePad ID, your page brings up a Preview and Word verification box, but there's no place to enter the verification word, and, in fact, the picture of the word is clipped off at the bottom.
In IE 8, there's the added annoyance that the scroll bar doesn't work in the preview box.
The Off-By-One browser doesn't work, either.
(Also, in some of the browsers, the Preview button does not work; it produces an error message, "Your request could not be processed. Please try again.")
I posted this using Opera 9.52, under which the mouse wheel scrolls the box to expose the place to enter the verification word and the "Post Comment" button. Opera seems to be the ONLY browser that works to post a comment here!
Dave
August 28th, 2009 at 5:04 am
This is so annoying - I try to help out reinstalling some guy's PC.. getting the keys out of the old and more or less crapped windows installation - and almost before I start produKey I'm told that this MUST be a generic virus trojan or whatever - this time it was McAffe
Could we make a petition list or somethin ? - would that help ?
Peter
August 30th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
this is really pissing me off. I have to disable the antivirus prog to regain the lost e-mail password of a friend. Had this with f-secure and trendmicro.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:48 am
Great program. So little, so easy, so fast and still so effective.
You need such program once a year or less, so put your virus defender software on
off state (disable it) and read your key. next boot its on again. and everything is fine.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:14 am
I've been using a simple a time sync prog for about 15 years (AtomicClockSync). Just a couple months ago Trend Micro started calling it a trojan or virus or something (Can't remember exactly which right now). I've also been using Trend for many years without ever seeing this before.
I reported this to Trend and their ultimate response was 'Stop using this program. It is not compatible with Trend Internet Protection'
I ended up just adding it to the exceptions list.
I can see why this is unfair to the small SW developers. It seems they should band together for some class action lawsuit that gets them more attention from the AV companies.
September 4th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
How about lobbying the anti-virus/malware testing organisations to include false positives as a negative in their testing? Perhaps some already do this, but when I looked at the latest test from Malware Research Group they seemed to rate the tested programs only according to how many true malware programs were detected (i.e. true positives).
I'm sure if some of these anti-virus programs started dropping in the ratings, or their favourable reviews became less favourable because of high rates of false positives, they'd quickly begin to work harder on remedying the problem.
After all, if an anti-virus developer wants a perfect score in one of these review tests, it would be simple to achieve: just block EVERYTHING. Makes no sense, but would get a great test score.
September 15th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Nir! Great programs but yes, the false positive problem is an issue. I only have AV problems with your software when you use UPX for executable compression. Any chance of releasing executables that haven't been compressed?
September 18th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Our product iNet Protector is constantly detected as malware. We communicate with anti-virus vendors every month, but false alarms come back. Today this is harming our business to a very significant extent.
October 5th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I faced the exact problem, my legit program has been classified as trojan/virus... those antivirus companies really goes too far.
October 5th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
I think I'd select two major players in the market: Symantec and McAffee, and call their P/R department instead of sending your exe and asking them to remove the false positive.
We've had a similar problem in the past and all of a sudden one of our utility executables detected as Malware by Symantec, after week of communication, the problem was fixed permanently. When you use their web site, you'll always find people that they cannot make decisions, but once you involve their legal, security or PR departments, you'll get to the right people to deal with the situation on hand.
October 5th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Yes, I've had the same problem with Avast. They reported a part of my software, Puchisoft Dispacher, as a virus. To report the virus, you have to actually install their software (You can't just email them). So I did, and I used the software to report the virus, and they just ignored me.
I ended up having to change the code to do the exact same thing, but differently, which Avast didn't think was questionable, even though I was doing the exact same thing! Sigh... This is why I don't use Avast anymore.
October 8th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I'm a sysadmin, I deal with users forgetting their passwords and me needing to get access "somehow" to a remote machine... Your tools, sysinternals and a few dozen other are MUST HAVE TOOLS ! (they should be packaged with windows!, it's THAT essensial!)
I did face the false alarms, I did face the deleted executables .. (we switched to Symantec's endpoint protection)
I'm faced with our proxy protection (websense)...
When are people going to understand, we are there to help... and yet we are seen as the bad guys from people who don't know, or don't have the needs we have ...
I will pray for AV companies to bann the "hacking tools" section of their products!
(if you install metasploit, I mean, you know what your're doing ... it's not like you don't know what you get into...)
AV should consider that fact...
or well.. . ... if your're unhappy use linux... but by doing so , you wont help other users in need of "respect" with their own online behavior !
Thanks for reading and thats for that bell ringer of an article!
October 9th, 2009 at 3:25 am
I use USB stick with integrated read-only switch, that prevents Nirsoft utilities from being deleted by any antivirus, when I plug it into foreign PC.
October 9th, 2009 at 5:58 am
I've been using your utilities for some 8 years, I guess (not absolutely sure), and I'd like to say THANK YOU.
I have several times sent messages to some companies that produced anti-virus and security software (like Zone Alarm) in order to explain that NirSoft products should not be blocked. The problem is that I get no response and I cannot know if they care a straw for such letters.
I think these companies are too big to be scrupulous about small developers and small clients. The smaller companies or those that are based on a different approach would be more careful. For example, I remember some time ago Spybot-S&D included Nirsoft in its black list but then the list was corrected. Unfortunately, it is difficult to imagine companies that produce effective anti-virus software (which means a global task) to "waste their time" for the benefit of a relatively small group of individuals.
I must just note with regret that even Nod32, which used to be much more fair to NirSoft, now has it blacklisted, too. If you use the highest level of protection with Nod32, then you cannot download Nirsoft programs. In some cases, they get deleted automatically.
So what should I do to correct this problem? Organize the petition or what?..
October 12th, 2009 at 11:56 am
I found an interessting Test on Antivirus and "False-Positives (FP)".
At
http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/main-tests
you can view the test as a PDF. The last one is from August 2009.
At page 10 you ´ll find out that McAfee, Norman and Kingsoft detected over 40 FP while Bitdefender, Avast and MS detected 4 and 5 FP only.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:40 am
Just today I tried to download NirLauncher and the zip file is intercepted by Trend Micro during download and I cannot download it. Being a technical at testing lab this quite annoying that I cannot use some tools necessary for work. Thankfully corporate security allows expections to uninstall or reconfigure Trend Micro when it's interfering with work.Overall Trend Micro is not bad but it's really slow and resource hungry. Symantec was better.
Good thing is that all AutoIt apps I create, to date, work with Trend Micro.
F-Secure also gets lot of FP's.
October 14th, 2009 at 9:47 am
I have switched Internet security software from BitDefender to G Data and though I really do prefer G Data it still has the same problem with issuing false positives. I am trying to find a contact I can get in touch with to report the problem to. NirSoft has so many great utilities it's sad to see this situation crop up again.
October 14th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Antivirus softwares just exist to leave your system slower. the detection technique they use is "dumb" because they compare codes with a database that is constantly being updated. if you code a decent private cryptor, all "viruses" will be undetected to these boring softwares. Also notice that due to this behaviour, if your program has some piece of code in which another application known to really be a malware then it will end up being detected as well.
I dont use these softwares except for testing and vulnerabilities research. My advice is NEVER trust them. If people used a restricted user account on Windows, let the system and applications always up to date and specially, didnt open any kind of files they receive like pictures.exe (very well known social engeneering used by malware) which surely is something malicious then they wouldnt need an Antivirus since 99.9999% of the infections are the user´s fault and not a critical remote vulnerability that was exploited by a recently coded worm/virus .
October 21st, 2009 at 4:01 am
all my antivirus software and registry cleaner have been flagged by norton and main anrtivirus as virus! this is ridicolous! thanks for this article, it's 100% true!
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I got false alert by McAfee about iepv.exe saying Detected As "Artemis!28C110B8D0AD", Detection Type "potentially Unwanted Program". It did not clean or block the utility from running. This blog helped clarify
the AV alert could be ignored.
October 27th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Well, i use Antivir (Avira)... and it suddenly started "spotting" SysInternals psexec.exe as a virus ... There´s a note on this from an user inside their OWN forum!
When i get a "virus warning" i usually google it first, to see if its a FP. But it´s BORING having to do this 1,2,3,100 times...
BTW, a fine way to "appear" on google and alert users like me is to post in the AV software forums.
Of course your Password recovery tool was branded as a "trojan" ... one more for the exception list.
October 28th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Make your applications Open Source, so even if the antivirus panics, the user can still see the source code and confirm that there's nothing harmful in it.
Not providing the source code of a free (gratis) software is suspicious.
October 29th, 2009 at 9:46 am
First...thank you for all these great little programs. I really learn a lot by using them. Since they are free, I get the chance to see things and learn from them that I couldn't do if I had to purchase some of the larger and very expensive programs out there that do the same things.
I ran DNS Data View this morning and Norton Internet Security 2010 flagged it as a dangerous program, but gave me the option to allow it (which I did of course). They also provide a way to pass along through the program to all other users whether something seemed safe after using it. Of course, that is all based on opinion, but I am happy to pass mine along about NirSoft products to try and help.
Oh, and Juan....if you need to see inside the code, there are a couple of neat programs to do that too. I can only think of one right now (the others are on my other machine). I will post back later with other names. The one I am using rightnow is Resource Tuner (restuner.com). Trial version available.
Cheers!
October 31st, 2009 at 10:50 am
@Juan
AV companies doesn't need to have source code..
They use reversers & debuggers to analyse machine code & behaviors of the programs :p
Since Nirsoft "password recovery tools" doesnt connect to the internet to send something, its a bit pointless to tag them as "trojan" because ALL TROJANS (i mean trojan, not virii) are using internet , right? Yet, i also saw real UNDETECTED malware embedding your pwd tools WHICH WERE DETECTED, using them with command line to record passwords, and send files to a remote server (which then i get fucked by the ISP :p)
Crazy AV, no?
I have same problem with my Nod32 when developping my own crypter for my own programs...
Since its based on a open source crypter used sometimes by viruses, Nod constantly show FP when i compress dummy test programs (witch just does a messagebox).. So, this is obviously not the program content that warn NOD, but really the encryption itself..
Well, I have an idea... To stop Virus detection, maybe you can use a tool that mangle / destroy / add junk/ add a sort of VM to the code? This may also stop scammers and rippers like the MSNinfo ones
November 7th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Antivirus software as lost its relevance. Just run your Windows System using LUA+SRP ideology.
November 14th, 2009 at 1:10 am
The only way for this to change is for small software publishers to collectively sue 2-3 antivirus software companies (e.g., Symantec, McAfee) for libel. When my McAfee comes up and says that your software is a Trojan (like it just did) - it is a false statement and it is damaging your business. The only problem, of course, is that since you don’t charge for your software, damages may be hard to prove.
November 18th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
I agree that this is a problem. I hate it when a software program that I purchased, deletes or quarantines programs that i have installed without asking my permission. This is especially irritating if the action takes place because of a false positive.
November 19th, 2009 at 12:09 am
Nir,
I couldn't agree more. It is not getting ridiculous - it has been ridiculous for a long time now. The only way I was able to even download your utilities in the recent past was to disable NOD32 completely. Then I downloaded them and stored them all on a flash drive. Whenever I needed to use them I would first disable any AV and AS programs. Lately I am able to download the Nirsoft utilities without any interference from NOD32, however I still disable it when I run the password utilities.
Thank you for writing this article. Hopefully more people will contact their AV developers and let them know that this won't be tolerated.
Jim M
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:42 pm
The only real solution is to make a website with a database for users that points to real developers. Kind of like filext.com. After a time it will become an authority on established developers. New developers should always be treated with suspicion.
You can also make a utility that checks programs' checksum and verifies it to a database. If it will become professional enough to not allow malware writers to pass the test it would become a priority for AVs to make sure they don't FP your database entries.
I think you can even ask for AVs to pay maintainance costs after a while (depends on your security and quality). It's also in their benefit and it means savings in testing and inventing new problems for their customers (that cost money in support).
There is no other solution and there will never be.
November 26th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Hi,
A scan by Systweak's System Protector identified MailPassView as malware, on my work PC.
I had no idea I had MailPassView installed, and haven't had a chance to discuss it with the person, at work, that is in charge of computers.
I have just a question: is it possible for someone, a hacker, to remotely use MailPassView to steal passowrds from my computer? Or the only way to install it is by having direct access to my computer?
I did not clean it using my antispyware software yet, but I will if I suspect that no one here (with administrative priviledges) install it as a password recovery system.
So, all I would like to know is: can MailPassView be installed remotely my someone hacking to my computer?
--
Thank you for your time.
November 28th, 2009 at 5:43 am
I do fully agree antivirus are pushing to far their heuristic sensitivity
It crazy cause it's almost preventing from writing smart & optimized code !
All of this for commercial reason...
Keep on your great work... I'll always disable my antivir for your great tools
PS : you can use that great web site http://www.virustotal.com/
to have suspicious files analyzed by 40 antivir...
December 8th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
I have uploaded IE Passviewer on virustotal.com. 16 out of 41 scanners classified it as Security Risk. To be fair, some detected heuristic or generic Trojans and 3 or 4 explicitly classified this tool as "NOT A VIRUS".
Let me say, I had downloads from torrents, that had less issues
I am not able to test this tool on my own without potentially running in severe security problems.
I fear i have to pass on IE Passviewer and everybody who is not able to check the integrity of this tool on his/her own should do the same.
Promised malware/virus/trojan freedom is not worse, but also not better than to much Heuristics in securiry tools ...
December 14th, 2009 at 10:23 am
I recently contacted AVG reference the 'Trojan' false positives, amazingly they have said that they will change the detection to 'potentially unwanted program'. Unfortunately this dosn't change the way AVG responds to the detection (it still prevents it being extracted/locks the file), but hopefully will scare inexperienced users slightly less!
No idea how long they will take to implement this though.
I submitted a support ticket on the AVG website, which started the following exchange
E-mail exchange with AVG technical:
Mon 14/12/2009 09:10
Dear Sir/Madam,
thank you for your email.
Please excuse for the delay of our response. Please let us inform you that the files attached to your previous e-mail were really infected. We would like to ask you to send us all sample files in a password-protected archive to virus@avg.com and write the archive password into the body of your e-mail reply.
More information about the topic on how to create a password-protected archive can be found here:
http://www.avg.com/faq?num=1341
Please be informed that AVG is preparing a similar feature as you suggested in your previous e-mail.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Best regards,
Vyara Lachovska
AVG Customer Services
website: http://www.avg.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, December 14, 2009 1:58:55 PM GMT
Hi,
I’ve been asked to provide the attached files in a p/w protected archive. Password is: avg1
Despite what your tech people have said, these files don NOT contain a virus, they are legitimate password recovery tools. I understand that these could be used as a hacktool, but AVG should only detect them as a potential threat, not a virus. Also the user should be given the option to ignore WITHOUT locking the file – e.g. an ‘I know the risks this program presents and would still like to use it’ button (like the confirm execution dialogue in Windows Vista).
Also, from a legal point of view, isn’t it libelous against the company that provides these tools to claim that they contain malicious code, when in fact the code in the program does only what is stated by its creator?
Regards,
Tom
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mon 14/12/2009 14:58
Dear Sir,
thank you for your email.
Please let us inform you that detection will be changed from virus trojan detection to Potentially unwanted program.
Thank you for your cooperation and patience.
Best regards,
Ladislav Krejci
AVG Technical Support
website: http://www.avg.com
mailto: support@avg.com
January 11th, 2010 at 5:57 am
I 100% agree with you. I don't so much have an issue with anti-virus programs being sensitive but when they detect a virus is a non-infected file, then allow infected files to be downloaded i think something should be done about it.
the government these days complain about people illegally downloading software such as anti-virus, but when you pay for the product and things like this happen can they really blame those people? it's not something they charge $5 for some charge quite alot for a full year subscription and purposely let viruses through so that we pay for their software to fix our computer. I herd that McAfee do that. I'm not entirely sure if that's true but I was using it and didn't notice anything unusual. I herd NOD32 is a well known decent anti-virus so perhaps getting your program listed as uninfected by them might fix some problems with smaller anti-virus companies..well its always worth a shot. but like you said developers don't have all day to be fixing other companies stuff ups that are directly affecting your app usage.For your own safety, please close this web browser window now and never return to this website.
At the moment I use trend and when I went to download your software this is what came up:
Website blocked by Trend Micro Internet Security
This Web page has been identified as Dangerous.
What you can do:
>
For your own safety, please close this web browser window now and never return to this website.
>
If you still want to see this blocked page:
1. Launch Trend Micro Internet Security console.
2. Click Internet & Email Controls.
3. Click the Settings... link under Protection Against Web Threats.
4. Click the Approved websites link in the next window that opens.
5. Copy and paste the address of the blocked website into the list.
Note: If you think this website should not be blocked, please notify Trend Micro by clicking this button:
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:16 pm
I downloaded Mail PassKey last night and AVG Free flagged it up as malware. Someone on SuperUser told me it wasn't. Anyway, thanks. If AVG hadn't flagged it up as a problem, I could have used Mail PassKey to extract a password from Outlook in a few minutes rather than flailing around for hours in regedit.exe and taking my frustrations out on SuperUser.
Keep up the hard work. I do hope AVG and the other AV software vendors get this sorted. Next time I need to extract passwords, I'll grab Mail PassKey and ignore AVG. Perhaps one way to do this would be if someone could get together a whole bunch of Windows freeware apps and use them as a test suite for anti-virus false positives. Then publish it - show the world which AV software vendors have the highest number of false positives.
Also, "potentially unwanted programs"? What? Isn't that all software? I consider Outlook potentially unwanted, but that doesn't mean it needs to have a bloody great big warning from AVG saying there's a problem.
January 23rd, 2010 at 5:51 am
Hi,
I experienced the same problem!
January 25th, 2010 at 11:44 pm
Yes! I think you are right! I am using an antivirus called VIPRE which is claimed by most organizations as the best antivirus software available. Now, when I downloaded your software to find passwords for nothing but good causes, the antivirus classified it as a trojan with high risk!!! And after I read your blogpost about "antivirus companies - a headache for small developers", I am really frustrated!!! Right now, I have sent the file for analysis!!! And I am going to contact them too!!!
January 29th, 2010 at 3:36 am
Hi Nir,
Those who are trying to use your tools are most likely aware that these tools deal with sensitive computer operations. Any tool that tries to access hidden information by overriding "standard operations" is most likely going to be identified as a threat by an anti-virus/-malware program.
"Large companies" that develop low-level repair tools advise the user to "turn off" any anti-virus program prior to running the tool. Password sniffer! Password revealer! Password INVADER! Whom are we kidding? How else does anyone expect a security program to react to such processes?
I love your tools dude. They are brilliant! I don't even care if they are infected! Heh! I am pretty damn sure they are NOT INFECTED! It's enough to say they are concise, smart and definitely useful.
Robert S.
February 1st, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Oh, those pesky false positive alarms.
Every third party activity taking place in the sacred chambers of the Windows shrine or when you're touching the tender bits of the OS they raise false alarms. That's the stupid of AV companies. They also very simply think that every packed file has a dangerous payload. Not everyone wearing a balaclava is necessarily a thief.
One should consider the source where they get a file. No need to be paranoid. A minimum of trust is necessary.
February 6th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
AVG is allowing me to choose to ignore the threat, but it still stops me from extracting the files. While I can disable the resident shield, soethign else blocks the extraciton which i cannot disable.
February 6th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
I extracted the files on another computer to USB key and copied them to my HD. I still got the warning message but was able to add files to the exceptions list. however if you`re not quick about it will go straight to the remove/heal popup (which i just closed- extraction is prevented but nothign happens when the files are already there.)
February 13th, 2010 at 10:07 am
We must leave the window behind...
We must use free software!
Go GNU...!!!
February 24th, 2010 at 12:53 am
Find MessenPass via a post by Tina. 6 Free Password Recovery Tools for Windows.
I want to thank the creator, or creators of NirSoft. I had several days trying to get back the password of MySpaceIM, and surprise. MessenPass did the dirty job.
Do not listen to anti-virus, this program does its job and has to move things to succeed.
Thanks Again.
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Always the same problem.... Two stories :
1
I work in a big company which has a "secured" network. Last week, a technician came to see me
"Who is mister X ?".
"It's me..."
"You have some hacking tools on your computer"
I was obliged to delete the whole nirsoft utilities...
2
malekal.com is a french site dedicated to security, a really good site where people always help you. For me it's the best resource in french about security.
The whole site was flagged by siteadvisor (a McAfee emanation) as a spyware provider... A spyware fix named Combofix.exe was considered as a trojan.
I well known this fix, it works well, and it can fix some infection that McAfee couldn't fix or even detect...
March 3rd, 2010 at 8:00 am
i love these tools sad to hear that small companies are being target as victims as viruses into there software but the bad thing if big company's like Microsoft is able bypass any anti-virus software with no problems that's bad too all we need is some nogood doers to start cloning there virus as Microsoft software.
March 10th, 2010 at 6:52 am
Yesterday, I was at at a public library using their high-speed internet on one of their public access computer
systems and I downloaded the new 1.8.9 version of Unlocker from the Majorgeeks site onto a flash drive. Nothing
on the library system decided to pop up and complain about the file during its download, or once the download
was completed. Nothing popped up when I moved the file from the computer's desktop area to my flash drive.
I get home and start copying files from the flash drive to my system's hard drive, and suddenly Symantec's
Norton Internet Security 2010 flags unlocker 1.8.9.exe as having a virus and deletes it forthwith without giving
me the option of keeping it. The program's excuse for deleting the file is that it detected a heuristic virus
which it named Suspicious.ADH . I'll see if I can submit the program to Symantec for re-evaluation, but am
not that hopeful that will fix things. This isn't the first time when NIS decides a program has a virus on my
system - which logic tells me should be completely safe. That's because the majority of EXE programs that
I download these days almost always come from trusted web-sites such as Microsoft.com, filehippo.com,
and majorgeeks.com. If we can't trust THOSE companies to scan everything that they post for public usage,
then every computer user in the world is in big trouble I guess.
Anyway, I thought I would mention my frustration with NIS in this situation after reading your blogs about
most of the major antivirus companies finding false positives for viruses in a lot of programs. Winrar for
example has had at least one of their recent beta releases flagged by NIS as having a virus. In that case,
it may have been a legitimate virus removal since it was the virus that got put into a LOT of programs
worldwide that were using Visual Basic if I remember correctly. As for the adware stuff, I wish every single
system utility program maker was as nice as you are about letting people opt out of the crap they add.
I am sick and tired of all these programs like RealPlayer that want to shove Google Chrome or Yahoo Toolbar
or Ask Toolbar down people's throats. Some of them just install the adware without permission and that is
really irritating. That happens a lot with Ask Toolbar. Its too bad the customers can't file complaints with
the Federal Trade Commission over that kind of behavior from computer software makers - or can we?
Thank you for making Unlocker. Its a lifesaver and prevents a lot of hair pulling when you have files on
your system that Micro$oft Windows won't get rid of, no matter how many times you try to delete them.
But once Unlocker gets sicced on the bad boy files, they get their comeuppance really fast!
March 11th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
I am the developer of Xenu's Link Sleuth, a tool to find broken links. I've had my share of "false positives", I have described these adventures here:
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html#spy
I'll make a link to your blog post after submitting this.
March 11th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Suggestion, for False Positives. I run Norton AV 360. Twice I tried to run SearchMyFiles.
The first time nothing happened. On closer examination, I noticed that Windows Task Manager listed it as a running process. Then I got a popup with the message
SONAR detected security risk searchmyfiles.exe
SONAR has removed security risk searchmyfiles.exe. Your computer is secure.
Then I noticed that the program file was deleted.
So, I re-extracted it from the download zip file and tried running it again "As Administrator" a Vista feature, thinking that i could over-ride the AV block.
Same thing happened again.
This time, I clicked on the SONAR details, and to Norton's 360 credit I saw the option to ignore this so called "threat" and ignore it in future scans.
Now, it runs without problem and to NirSoft's credit, exceedingly well.
Therefore, my suggestion is to check your Antivirus Software for options to ignore files/programs it detects as a "threat." Perhaps look for an exclusion list, but search and you will find, also contact your Antivirus publisher for help on this.
March 14th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
#> My program (compressed with Executable Compressor) detected as virus by some antivirus products.
#> My Console Program (running in debug mode) detected as virus by N0RT0N 4NT1V1RU5.
#> My Windows Script Shell was blocked by some antivirus (feature called: script blocker).
#> and others shit... :p
I think i will create an antivirus by my self
March 23rd, 2010 at 12:25 pm
I'm small tools user. I encountered with this prolblem a lot.
I'm using mcafee enterprise, which is a must for my laptop as a policy of my company. I complaint to the IT department. Wish they can help ask McAfee to stop false positives.
April 15th, 2010 at 11:51 am
Just a few weeks ago, Norton FP'd on a binary that we include with every single product we ship. This binary has one use; tell daemon portions of our software to shut down, so we can update them--so Norton was allowing the installer to run, would trigger on an extracted file, and then the installer would fail with "Sharing Violation" when it went to update the daemonized components.
Grr.
April 22nd, 2010 at 6:51 am
Some av-software review sites do notice false positives as important hit to software quality.
As an example, http://www.av-comparatives.org/ currently rated Avira as one of best in most of their tests, but it didn't land in their top-3 overall solely because of massive amounts of false positives ... i think it will make Avira makers notice, i hope.
Since av-vendors cooperate when it comes to virus sigantures, i dont see no reason they cant cooperate in fp-sinatures part as well (both to verify their heuristics in testing and to step off software authors tails once reported) ... all we need to do is to make it pricey for them not to do it ... somehow.
PS. Thanks for nirsoft cache of quality software ... been saver on many occasions and indispensible tool in others.
April 23rd, 2010 at 12:34 am
I am glad that I found this blog! I am an independent game developer, and the installation file of my latest game has been detected as malware by many anti-virus programs! I am currently dealing with a number of unhappy customers, and I feel completely helpless to fix the situation. I am both relieved and saddened to find that I am not alone in this issue. I have linked to this blog on my site. Thank you for making us aware of the situation!
April 26th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
I can tell you the reason that AV programs are getting False positives:
Antivirus software does not ONLY scan for known viruses. It does also try to scan for unknown viruses by detecting "viral behaviour".
Viral behaviour is defined by the AV company in the antivirus software, but often viral behaviour is to try reading passwords from the system (as much malware tries to steal passwords), or taking screenshots, reading keyboard in unusual ways, controlling mouse/keyboard (can be a sign of a Remote Access Trojan, RAT) and such.
And then, the antivirus software detects the function in your software that reads passwords, and then it thinks it is some sort of evil password-stealer software, and then it classifies it as a generic trojan or something like that.
About Christophers case, it can be some code in either the installation packager, which tries to modify a vital system file (to install game drivers or something like that) that the AV survelliances on, or it can be code which detect keypresses in game via hooks, which the AV thinks is a keylogger.
A good idea is to write software WELL, do not use suspicious functions/APIs/Hooks. Instead try to do it via the built-in safe functions, like DirectX and such. This will not cause antiviruses to complain, since such built-in safe functions does have safeguards which prevents malware to use the functions in a feasible way, both in AVs and in the functions itself. For example a function will only allow to run while a fullscreen app is loaded. And AV software could have exceptions that for example a game is allowed to hook keyboard via DirectX while its running fullscreen or has focus.
When focus are removed or game exited, it must remove the hooks.
Trying to do things the "wrong" way, will cause AVs to complain.
And when you report a False positive, what AV companies has to do is to either create a whitelist-signature which excepts the software from detection, rewrite the detecting signature (not always easy to do) or add the hash of the false positive to a exception list.
And here comes a security problem too: The problem is that a AV developer cannot whitelist too much, since then virus developer can write their virus in a way so it will fit a whitelist signature and skip detection.
And the AV developer cannot put too much whitelists, since it will be huge for users to download, especially if the user comes home from a long holyday and should apply a update while their last update is 1 month old.
Another problem with whitelisting your software, is that your software might not protect itself enough, so a virus/trojan could then piggyback on your software, for example shell():ing your software and then hooks into it to read of passwords and send it to some server.
This means AV developer has to priority what to put in whitelist and not put in whitelist. Of course they select to whitelist software from larger companies (with a larger user base) than from small developers/companies.
So the conclusion is that, this with false positives is something you have to live with when you develop software which are "security sensitive" in one or more ways, which your software is. Like you have to deal with the police if you engage in suspect activities (even if the activities are legal).
April 30th, 2010 at 8:47 am
I had this problem with Norton AV. First time it destroyed all your programs. Next time I put all your programs to exclusion list. Since that everything was OK.
So to be realistic I propose just to put the warning to readme files. Normal users will manage antivir progs. Stupid users still may blame you if theydo not read "readme" files.
Anyway your programs are fantastic!!!
May 8th, 2010 at 10:33 pm
The blog was a little tl;dr but I agree for what all being said.
I am programming myself using VB6, but since for example Avira updated to 8,9,10, almost ALL of my programs cause it to lie about it being a virus. Once I compiled just a simple form and it gave a false positive O_o
Sometimes I was able to trick Avira by upx'ing the exe, but not even that helped sometimes.
This is the reason what caused me to switch to Kaspersky, but wait:
(quoting Sebastian Nielsen: "A good idea is to write software WELL, do not use suspicious functions/APIs/Hooks. __Instead try to do it via the built-in safe functions, like DirectX and such. __" )
Actually, that doesn't apply to Kaspersky. ALL games that utilize DirectX to read the Keyboard are now (how could it be) KEYLOGGERS (of course, duh).
My exception list is long enough - and that mainly because of the games, which are listed sometimes up to 4 times. On the other hand: Recently my PC was infected with a virus, no idea where it came from, nor what it causes, Kaspersky didn't recognized it. Same counts for the older kaspersky 6.0 for Windows Server 2003. WTF, is an old program version NO REASON to give it actual signatures? *grrr*
I am not going to rant about mcAfee's processmania, which are unprotected from (forced) stopping or Avira's behavior NOT to protect its own damn signatures from DELETING WHILE the program is running. I hope they fixed that. would be fun to see a new virus doing that, though.
May 13th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Hey Nir et al.
Love the utilities.
Something most people don't know, is that virustotal.com actually submits the samples to their respective engine vendors once we've uploaded them. This was done in response to malware authors running their code through the engines in order to obfuscate more effectively. I'm wondering if it might not be a bad idea to upload all of your .exes /.dll's in hopes of having them re-categorized or made "known." The problem arises when less scrupulous companies with phantom labs, actually copy detections from larger vendors. Detailed in this article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/10/kaspersky_malware_detection_experiment/
I'm not recommending a product, but i can tell you that Sophos has been very receptive when I've submitted your apps for white-listing.
As for false-positives, endpoint security suites are scrutinized on their ability to catch 0-day type threats with their heuristics/behavioral analysis, so I wouldn't look for it to get better in the near future. From their standpoint, it's better to be safe and manually authorize a potentially harmful app, then to face the consequences of not making a move.
I would also be remiss, if I didn't throw in the extra security built into HIPS, which is becoming prevalent and increasing necessitated in corporate environments e.g. how else would you block a piece of malware with thousands of variants without a behavior pattern. Lots of false positives here, including your tools
The game has changed thanks to fakeantivirus and it's ilk.
May 20th, 2010 at 11:14 am
We have a SonicWALL appliance at work and it blocks the zipfile from being downloaded. The dialog claims the detection of "Asterisk.C" (Trojan) by the SonicWALL Gateway Anti-Virus Service.
May 20th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
I have just installed your NirLauncher on my PC and Microsoft Security Essentials immediately reported that:
- rdpv.exe is Hacktool:Win32/Passview, and
- iepv.exe is Trojan:Win32/Bladi!rts
I will notify Microsoft.
May 20th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
I just downloaded NirLauncher (based on recommendation in Brian Livingston's Windows Secrets) after nervously overriding the "dangerous" warnings. I haven't installed it yet. According to the preceding posts, there apparently won't be any issues with it. But how am I to know? Install it and face the possible consequences? Set up workarounds?
As a user (advanced amateur?) I find myself torn:
A condescending "Well it has to be said, that if the users are so stupid that they cannot tell the difference between a legitimate program and a virus, then perhaps they shouldn't be using them" isn't terribly enlightening. How are we supposed to tell the difference? Run the program to find out if it's a virus? Run the program and if all goes well, congratulate myself on my brilliance in not being stampeded into a virus panic?
= = = = =
So how does the user sort out the real stuff -- safely?
May 21st, 2010 at 8:54 am
While I was reporting the problem to Microsoft, I noticed this page on their web site, which I thought might be of interest to you, as it is specifically for software vendors to report false positives:
Microsoft Anti-Malware: False Positive Report Form (http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Shared/VendorFP.aspx)
May 22nd, 2010 at 12:16 pm
I personally use kaspersky, $100 for 2 years on 3pcs. (Less than $17 a year)
Personally, I don't think my computer would last 5 minutes without it. I go to a 1-1 school (A school where everyone has laptops) and the amount of viruses/malware I get is horrid (even hidden .bat files on USBs)
Kaspersky always asks what to do, so if there is ever a false positive I can stop it from removing the application. It is also useful in that it lets me control and suspect program (Let's me run an infected program while denying it networking and file system access)
I'm not saying Kaspersky is the best, but it is the best I have found so far. Personally, while I love FOSS I always go commercial when I want something that will work without me putting thought into it.
May 30th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Completely right - just using a runtime packer or some other not-so-widespread technique is usually enough to put you into the virus/malware report list of a couple AV engines.
And I suspect that "security software" manufacturers are quite happy with all those false positives in their firewalls and AV engines as they make their products seem as beeing useful and effective - as long as they are lucky not to damage the whole system or trash a well-known app, most customers won´t even realize that they´re fooled.
I think today security software already does more harm than good, here´s my experience with AV software:
-backup script killed by AV software putting one of the command line tools used by it into quarantine (took me one hour to fix it and caused one week without backup - luckily i did not need it then)
-two system utilities blocked as malware, nothing severe but still annoying as the AV tool seems to have a buggy exclusion list
-automatic signature update stopped working without warning on one machine, thus running with outdated data unnoticed for several months
-one personal firewall caused a machine to crash just by PINGing it
-one harmless joke program triggered an alert as virus "JOKE/something". Not that wrong, but it would scare the average user more than necessary, thus possibly overreacting
-one colleague got a trojan mail - detected successfully by AV software , but the machine got infected successfully anyway
-one friend got malware via PDF - detected successfully by AV, but the machine was infected successfully anyway
-another friend got his OS damaged into an unusable state by AV a few days before the ultimate release deadline, thus not beeing able to finish his job in time.
-one free program I´m publishing got marked as malware/spyware/suspicious by a couple of well-known AV products, thus scaring users and potentially damaging my reputation
-one of the DOS files on my HD is reported as infected (which is somewhat correct as it still contains parts matching the signature), however the virus contained in it is inactive as its entry routine got overwritten by a repair tool. Quite annoying as the original is nowhere to be found anymore
-an old 5,25" floppy was marked as containing a boot sector virus (correct)
May 31st, 2010 at 5:22 am
Yes. AVs not only bothering developers but their customers tooo! Mcafee recently released a pattern update which flags svchost.exe (in system32 dir) as virus. And apart from flagging, it deletes svchost.exe and making several computers un bootable! And for this mistake Mcafee offered a rescue boot disk to fix the PC and as compensation, it offered another freebie to the customer! Guess what? 2 MORE years subscription of dreaded Mcafee software!!! I can't stop laughing!
Similarly some years ago Norton implemented some tough activation measures to lock down pirate copies. Guess what? The so called activation software had a vulnerability using which many systems where hacked! In other words, the people (& customers) who had legit Norton AV installed on their PC got hacked, while, PCs which had some other AV or NO AV at all, escaped!
May 31st, 2010 at 5:29 am
In the end, it is like going to a doctor for a medical check up and getting infected during the process of the medical checkup! Why the hell is the check up for in this case?
Similarly AVs which are designed to keep up the productivity, by stopping virus/malware, they themselves do the damage to the PC which they are supposed to protect!
In some cases impact is mild (a few mins of productivity lost) but in many cases impact is serious (many hours of productivity lost and requiring more man power to solve the mess)!
June 3rd, 2010 at 9:23 am
I think the solution can be simple and cost effective. Just make a list of all your software pruduction so we can insert it in the "excluded list" of any antivirus program (even if there is a piece of software that gives no problem).
For any new program you launch just append it to the "list" so anyone who downloads, from one to all of Nir Soft programs, can assure the antivirus program will not affect it.
Hope you understand my English and the whole idea.
Congratulation for making so useful programs!!!
July 10th, 2010 at 7:48 am
Avast antivirus (home edition, free) marks some of the utilities as "Potentially Unwanted Software" . That's better than Trojan, but I still sent some false positives reports. The "Report false positive" button was right in the warning window. I like the option "Disable antivirus for 10 minutes/1 hour" too. You get why I use this one?
Nice tools btw.
July 14th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
I am the creator of webDOMinator and two of the main helper utility programs that I use (wdbrowse.exe and wdupdate.exe) are required for things like updating the program and doing user registration, etc. Since they are included in my installer program in compressed format, they make the entire installer considered a virus. There are false positives all across the board. I used virustotal.com to run analysis on all of them using over 40 anti-virus programs.
Trying to guess what these companies are using in their guessing algorithms that make their software consider my software a virus is mind-wreckingly insane. I literally think I'd have a better chance setting up a petition and lobbying in the government to pass a law requiring anti-virus companies that use heuristic-guessing algorithms to hire the staff necessary to answer and correct all false-positive reports within 48 hours.
Their lazyness and greed has ended up costing me countless clients because people download my program every day, and I'm sure that over 60% of people cannot use my software correctly due to anti-virus companies. I have even got my website reported and had to fight to get my website back up because my web site server company suspended my account. This heuristic guessing stuff causes not only a bad reputation for software developers, but causes more work to have to be done to try and figure the logic of some of these companies.
They will not see the error of their ways until THEY are actually affected by this themselves and end up losing money because it's all they really care about. I think someone else already mentioned that most anti-virus companies would benefit from doing this because it would make it seem to the clueless end consumer that the internet is much more filled with viruses than it really is, thus causing more conversions on their end at the cost to the small software developers.
July 17th, 2010 at 10:18 am
As a security professional, I understand the issues that non-security minded individuals face. I have used these so call virus/trojan tools... they are not. It's annoying to have to turn off my virus scanner/make an exception to allow these needed tools. Is there something that can be done to mask those great tools from being blocked by the anti-virus scanners. As a forensic examiner, in dealing with live systems, I need to grab critical evidence without the need for av scanners to get in the way.
Please keep developing these kinds of free tools... You are a trusted site!
July 23rd, 2010 at 1:29 am
I am one of those people that constantly forgets their password because for security reasons i have a different one for all my accounts and your programs have really helped me, so thank you and if people think your programs are viruses then they need to learn A LOT about computers.
Thank You for all your programs and keep doing a great job.
July 26th, 2010 at 8:24 am
Security Essentials from Microsoft (MSE) only detects MessenPass. Why?? Because I could easy and with a little .Net programming transform this app in a deadly IM password stealer. I think that considering thses tools as Riskware is appropriate since is so easy to hackers to use them to bad porpuses.
July 28th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
I have several utilities one of them is a keylogger for windows, initially i developed it for my own use, we know that a keylogger can be used for good or bad purposes, i can't controll it but i stated it before the installation begins don't use for illegal purposes.
These years i'am facing the problem of false positives, the users simple are not able to install the software because before the installer starts several antivirus simple delete it. my sales drop 90%.
If internally we simple use an API example: TerminateProcess several antivirus list our exe as virus, that is stupid!.
I will try to make noise about this problem. In a few of minutes i will submit an answer to kasper "...Can you send us a description of the functionality of this file? This file is engaged in theft of passwords."
Thank you for your initiative.
July 31st, 2010 at 1:28 am
I will save my time writing to antivirus companies, they are not going to remove my software =(, kasper,trend,etc. a new compiled probable could help, but i would like to reproduce the article or idea of Nirsoft.
August 5th, 2010 at 9:41 am
I have false positive with Mcfee on portableApps and Xenu - thanks for this article that explains a lot - I could have been one of these users thinking "bad bad developer who put a trojan in their program"!
byz++
roland
August 19th, 2010 at 9:38 am
We were developing a update down loader for our software. After we finished building the application we went to test it, Works great and very reliable and stable. EXCEPT Vipre and Norton detect it as a Trojan virus.
So I sent them both an email to see why they are detecting an application made by a developer as a virus?
I can see their point,using this app for ruthless scams. But we do not even get involved in crap like that.
The problem is, the definitions are so broad that it detects anything remotely close to the definition.
For anyone that does not quite follow that line. It's like this: I build a virus detection application that detects the letters A,E,I,O, and U well now it is going to detect and words that contain any of these letters. So all words are going to be detected as a virus.
We need to demand that they be more precise and specific in their definitions. Right now they have us over a barrel because of this. The fact remains that when it comes down to us or them. The customer will take the side of the anti virus over us. It would seem to me that virus companies would have a developer submit area. Then they could check the file and add it to the definition list of as acceptable.
Right now all they have is the broad list of what they look for. They need to make a developer submit area so we can submit our apps, and be added to the don't check list.
If an app is detected as a virus by some piece of crap anti virus program, it is easy to tell the customer their program is faulty. But when Norton and other well known Virus programs pick it up,,that's a pretty hard one to sale.
I
August 26th, 2010 at 1:51 am
Just a Note..I have used your software on several occasions..and thank you for the great work.
I use Trend Micro..and I have submitted several time false positives to them.
I receive no reply so I have no idea how they handle that,it has even gone so far as to block your website.
and if I do bypass that it wont allow me to download anything.
It does detect your pass software with virus..and I just came upon this blog..so I dont have that information.
but I do submit as false positive ...keep up the great work !!!!
August 26th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
I just scanned NirLauncher 1.06.11 with AVG Free Edition 9.0.851, and it said NirLauncher contained nine "Potentially dangerous objects". So no, it looks like AVG did not do what they promised—to change it to "Potentially unwanted program". Too bad.
I've posted about this on AVG's forum.
August 26th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
In case you're interested, here's the URL of my posts about this on the AVG forum:
http://forums.avg.com/in-en/avg-free-forum?sec=thread&act=show&id=106153#post_106153
August 27th, 2010 at 5:57 am
A lot of the prank programs i use are blocked by norton 360 and are called "security risk joke program".
August 30th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
All I can say is keep up the great work...
Thanks for the useful tools.