Ultimately, Fernando is right. The closed-source software model is terminally broken: licence agreements that don't make sense, and increasing questions about trustworthiness--both illustrated in the example in this article--mean that you can no longer have confidence that the software will do what you expect it to do, and not do something you don't want.

Free/Open Source is the only solution left. Deal with it.

Many anti-virus and anti-spyware programs often give you false-postive readings on utilities and programs that let you hack things or dig into system information. The Anti-programs are being overly strong in this area so the user is rather safe than sorry. 

Be aware of this and know what and where you download from. 

I use AVG Free 8 and it lists potential threats, which include totally safe things in the realm of what I've mentioned above.

Usually someone who is going to use hacks and special utilities to dig into info, etc, is going to know if the utility is safe or not. 

So, this is all a non-issue. If you don't know better, don't use it.

code can come together and look like a virus doesn't mean its a virus it looks at the binary code if any of the code looks like is similar to a virus it will flag it.

The antivirus model that we have right now is completely broken. Its no real obstacle to malware, but sucks up masive amounts of CPU resources to falsely identify legitimate programs.

Considering the length of this article and its lack of a conclusion (the author still has no idea if the software example is illegitimate or legitimate) I can only conclude that the author spent way too much time on way too many words.

Why didn't you just stick with the title and be done with it? Obviously it is because there are so many dumb asses out there who take words (verbal or written) to be truth. Unfortunately for them, they will continue to see labels like "this is safe - download it now!" and continue to be fooled. Fortunately for me, I am there to be paid $40 per hour when their pc acts up. 

Here's a thought: the software was tested ONCE by Softpedia (prove otherwise). Here's another: the software was tested NEVER by Softpedia (prove otherwise). How about: the software is verified to contain a trojan. And finally: the software is verified to be legitimate. Obviously you'll never know by your own admission, thus this article has no more value than the typical common sense to which people USED to be born with.

Go ahead and tell all of us again how we shouldn't take for granted that written words tell the truth. You might want to remind your readers to not talk to strangers or look both ways before crossing the street while you're at it.

Like I said, it would have been easier for you to have just stuck with the title and move on to the next blockbuster story you no doubt will enlighten us with. 




Wait, you were 

".. running at the INQ's LatAm HQ until this morning AVG kicked in..."

And 

"In our case, the v7.5 Free edition of AVG Anti virus"

You are using the "free for non-commercial use" AVG at a business? And you admit it?

"Avira antivirus is the best heuristics scanner of ALL antivirus. It does not miss, it does not produce false positives. " -agent 14

believe what you want....but don't bs & spam at the same time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avira#Reviews :
"In the end of January 2008 Avira AntiVir was rated 6.5 out of 8 in tests for detection and removal of rootkits and 71% for proactive virus detection by Anti-Malware Test Lab; both scores qualified for "gold" status, the highest award.[2] However, it also received "poor results", the lowest grade, for infection treatment[3] and it failed the self-protection test.[4] Avira received an "Advanced+" for both the February 2008 on-demand test and May 2008 retrospective test from AV-Comparatives."

Twice now I've been through the less-than-pleasant experience of having my corporate virus scanner identify all software written with Delphi as malware. 

Clearly some twit has extracted a common section of code (eg, from system.pas) from the Delphi libraries and used that as a signature.

Very irritating for a Delphi developer !

AVG is one of the worst AVs you can get. Avira AntiVir has a free version and is MUCH better as the poster above said, and linked to av-comparatives which proves it. Fewer false positives, higher detection rates and faster scanning.

http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/4a0e0a945b8cd7fd3b5175512d0d6a93

According to this, which also uses the latest updates from 30+ different AV companies, its completely clean.

So Virus Free does still mean something, what a waste of time.

> Web-based seals of assurance about downloadable software being "tested virus-free" are worth very little, it seems, or anti-virus programs are getting too paranoid thanks to heuristics.

Or, indeed, both.

The sheer mass of constantly-updated malware out there has killed signature-based virus scanning and made heuristic-based scanning much more difficult. AV vendors have responded by making the heuristics woolier and more sensitive, with the result that legit software (and pretty much anything using an EXE packer) is triggering false positives left, right and centre.

As users start to get more false positives than actual viruses, and new malware used in web exploits continues to go undetected, today's AV becomes effectively useless, and far more trouble than it's worth. The only hope for the future is behaviour-based detection and blocking, and that's something that's not easy to bolt onto Windows, as the currently available examples demonstrate.

Meanwhile, 'virus tested' downloads - if the sites concerned even bother to retest them continuously against new definitions - are only tested against the same AV engines as are already failing on the desktop, so they offer little to no reassurance.

Did the site claim it had tested with AVG?

Probably not.

There are at least a dozen AV suites out there and Softpedia would have to test all their offered software with _all_ of these at least once weekly to ensure the software on offer is still truly virus, etc free.

But they don't do this.

So if anyone is dumb enough to believe these types of sites offering 'labels of verification', then more fool them. :-)

Gives us IT bods more money to repair the damage ordinary users cause themselves. :-)



Third option is to let a trusted, independent and competent outsider read and check the source. Of course that excludes any journalists.

Avira antivirus is the best heuristics scanner of ALL antivirus. It does not miss, it does not produce false positives.

http://www.av-comparatives.org/

I write code. I don't want users to steal that code.

That doesn't mean I want to distribute malware, it just means i'm not a sandal wearing GNU hippy.

You dont actually know if its a virus or not, so you through mud at both parties

Maybe you'd have a meaningful article if you could prove it does contain a virus, cause a false positive on a little known app isnt news worthy you even say as much in the article

upload it to http://cwsandbox.org and watch what happens when the file is ran there. It's a really nice site, can't recommend it enough.