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Author Topic: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad  (Read 9958 times)

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Broni

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Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« on: December 03, 2009, 07:30:44 PM »
It happened to me yesterday....

http://www.dslreport...Gone-Mad-105773

Antivirus program suddenly sees false positives everywhere...



While it veers astray from our normal subject matter of broadband-related news, users in our security forum are indicating that Avast antivirus appears to have gone seriously off of the rails. According to users, the application has suddenly decided to flag many safe applications, freshly-downloaded files and dlls as malicious, wreaking havoc on user systems.


It appears that the program is flagging a number of files used by entirely normal programs such as Skype, Spybot Search and Destroy and other programs incorrectly as the Win32:Delf-MZG trojan.

Avast's official forums are currently being crushed by the sudden onslaught of traffic created by confused users, many of whom are being told that generic program files are a security threat. Impacted users should uninstall the program or disable the file shield functionality of the application until a fix is issued, lest they delete necessary files on the advice of an anti-virus program gone mad. Avast, which just celebrated the addition of its 100,000,000th user, is in for a very busy night.

Needless to say, your copy of Microsoft Paint is not a virus, regardless of what Avast is currently telling you.

Update Avast has posted a statement to their forum saying they've fixed the problem.

Helpmeh



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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #1 on: December 03, 2009, 08:06:29 PM »
A little off topic, but what's "C:\Program Files (x86)\..."? Is it something like 64...oh wait, I don't know what that is either.
Where's MagicSpeed?
Quote from: 'matt'
He's playing a game called IRL. Great graphics, *censored* gameplay.

Broni

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #2 on: December 03, 2009, 08:09:43 PM »
x86 are 32-bit files/programs on 64-bit system.

Quantos



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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #3 on: December 05, 2009, 03:58:01 PM »
I have yet to find any relative issues with avast on either an XP or Vista system yet.  This may not be widespread and may be indicative of other issues.
Evil is an exact science.

Broni

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #4 on: December 05, 2009, 04:21:23 PM »
No other issues.
If you just Google it, the problem was widespread.
It was fixed same day with next Avast update.

I was affected myself, as Avast flagged one of my legit and healthy folders.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #5 on: December 05, 2009, 04:26:39 PM »
Ah, there we have it then, obviosly my 12 hour days are interfering with my computer use.  :)
Evil is an exact science.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #6 on: December 05, 2009, 04:33:15 PM »
Because of botched update timing, the most affected areas were Pacific and Asia time zones.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #7 on: December 05, 2009, 04:35:18 PM »
Because of botched update timing, the most affected areas were Pacific and Asia time zones.

That makes sense then, I wouldn't have been on my system during that time frame at all.
Evil is an exact science.

geek hoodlum



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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #8 on: December 07, 2009, 12:17:08 AM »
One of our members got that virus. Too late, all .exe files deleted.

Topic: trojan detected Win32:Delf-MZG in AVAST pro

patio

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #9 on: December 07, 2009, 07:51:02 AM »
Just to clarify here all his .exe's were NOT deleted by Avast....they are gone because he didn't follow instructions from the Virus and Spyware section of the Forum...
" Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. "

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #10 on: December 07, 2009, 01:23:10 PM »
What really makes me mad is people on the chat are "helping" people who have this "virus" and saying the scan is right and these files are infected, AND THEN not listening when people shove proof in their faces that they're wrong.
Where's MagicSpeed?
Quote from: 'matt'
He's playing a game called IRL. Great graphics, *censored* gameplay.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #11 on: December 07, 2009, 03:15:36 PM »
A little off topic, but what's "C:\Program Files (x86)\..."? Is it something like 64...oh wait, I don't know what that is either.
x86 are 32-bit files/programs on 64-bit system.

More info here



What really makes me mad is people on the chat are "helping" people who have this "virus" and saying the scan is right and these files are infected, AND THEN not listening when people shove proof in their faces that they're wrong.

I'm not surprised at all.
I was trying to dereference Null Pointers before it was cool.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #12 on: December 07, 2009, 03:29:52 PM »
Where's MagicSpeed?
Quote from: 'matt'
He's playing a game called IRL. Great graphics, *censored* gameplay.

rthompson80819



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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #13 on: December 07, 2009, 05:24:15 PM »
Quote
What really makes me mad is people on the chat are "helping" people who have this "virus" and saying the scan is right and these files are infected, AND THEN not listening when people shove proof in their faces that they're wrong.

Quote
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
Mark Twain

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #14 on: December 07, 2009, 07:14:25 PM »
I never claim to know what I don't know.
(is that a sentence?)

If there is any doubt what-so-ever, I send them to see EF.  I've probably sent some his way that don't need him, but better safe than sorry, right?
Evil is an exact science.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #15 on: December 07, 2009, 08:09:20 PM »
I never claim to know what I don't know.
(is that a sentence?)

If there is any doubt what-so-ever, I send them to see EF.  I've probably sent some his way that don't need him, but better safe than sorry, right?
It's definately not you. When I see people who I don't know on the forum "helping" out with virus issues, I always say the only safe way is on the forum, but the people "helping" making up hyperboles about how long the experts take to respond compared to how long the "experts" on the chat respond. EF doesn't do anything on the chat (I've already pmed him about it, but he won't go on the chat). I'm not really concerned about people giving initial bad advice (use this AV scanner not that), I'm concerned about them saying that *insert critically important system file that is not infected* is a virus and needs to be removed. 
Where's MagicSpeed?
Quote from: 'matt'
He's playing a game called IRL. Great graphics, *censored* gameplay.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #16 on: December 07, 2009, 08:31:47 PM »
I just did a clean install of Windows 7 yesterday pm a clean 40gb  sata. Then I hooked up my large second drive. I installed Avast on the Windows 7 drive.  It hen did a scan on all of my stuff and found just one bad thing over on my XP WINDOWS. Deleted bad file. Rebooted into XP.  No problem. Works fine. :)
Avast is OK.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #17 on: December 07, 2009, 09:20:25 PM »
haha

"experts in chat"

I'd like to see that...

I was trying to dereference Null Pointers before it was cool.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #18 on: December 07, 2009, 10:47:56 PM »
Indeed, we do our best, but nothing can replace being able to take your time and get it right the first time.

In chat it's more like an accelerated trouble shoot.
Evil is an exact science.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #19 on: December 08, 2009, 12:38:25 AM »
The best way to reply or post on a thread that requesting help for fixing malware infection is to link the requester into Computer Hope Virus and Spyware section Guidelines.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #20 on: December 08, 2009, 06:49:28 AM »
Chat = dis-information Central.
" Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. "

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #21 on: December 08, 2009, 03:20:56 PM »
Sometimes Basically 100% of the time the chat is more hazardous than helpful.
Where's MagicSpeed?
Quote from: 'matt'
He's playing a game called IRL. Great graphics, *censored* gameplay.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #22 on: December 09, 2009, 03:43:08 AM »
Quote
EF doesn't do anything on the chat (I've already pmed him about it, but he won't go on the chat).

Nope! 8)

Besides not liking it. Effectively doing malware removal in a chat setting IMHO is 100% impossible.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #23 on: December 09, 2009, 06:48:20 AM »
Couldn't agree more.....
" Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. "

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #24 on: December 09, 2009, 03:20:23 PM »
Just imagine someone posting a hjt log in the chat...
Where's MagicSpeed?
Quote from: 'matt'
He's playing a game called IRL. Great graphics, *censored* gameplay.

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #25 on: December 09, 2009, 05:29:34 PM »
It happens more than you want to see...
" Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. "

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Re: Avast Antivirus Has Gone Mad
« Reply #26 on: December 10, 2009, 04:48:40 PM »
It happens more than you want to see...
I thought there was a line limit...another thing I thought wrong about.
Where's MagicSpeed?
Quote from: 'matt'
He's playing a game called IRL. Great graphics, *censored* gameplay.