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AVG Update Breaks iTunes
nate_in_ME writes "After getting a positive from the AVG virus detector while playing music on iTunes just a few minutes ago, I did a bit of research. It appears that AVG has recently pushed an update to the virus definitions that flags every iPod/iTunes related file as being infected with the 'Small.BOG' trojan. Interestingly enough, AVG does not have any information on this particular virus in their virus encyclopedia. Discussion on the Apple forum is up to 4 pages and climbing. One user there had an interesting thought: 'Maybe Palm has some shares in AVG...MUAHAAAA!!' (on page 3)."
Bad music is a virus.
It spreads like wildfire and everyone has it.
I actually submitted this yesterday...updates in the Apple discussion thread make it sound like everything is back to normal.
It's a conspiracy! Or... maybe it's just that the definition for the virus in question was rushed out the door without adequate testing. How many new viruses are reported each week again? They probably don't "beta test" their definitions, and just do it in a lab. Oops. The lab machines didn't have iTunes.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It does not appear to flag "every" file related to iTunes, it is just the iTunesMiniPlayer.dll.
The workaround is to disable the real-time scanner.
However their latest update had fixed it, and my real-time scanner is running again without problem.
I work at a AV vendor (not one of the big ones), and false positives are a big problem. Essentially there are two issues. First, how severe is the threat? You might skimp on your validation process in order to get something out sooner. Second (and much harder to resolve), there is effectively an infinite amount of software out there; on top of that, there may also be many different versions (iTunes 6, 7, 8, point releases, etc). You try to do the best you can, but shit happens because you can only test against so much software.
iTunes is about as useful as malware. If someone would only write a simple drag and drop app for the ipod touch that didn't require jailbreaking....
Seriously does anyone else have issues with how convoluted it really is to add mp3 files to an ipod touch? Add a folder to your library, wait while itunes chugs and makes a COPY of each file before syncing. Hit sync a few times and agree to all your old settings being overwritten (when all it really does is update). A $10 mp3 player allows me to right click and say "Send to..." Fuck you apple.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Seriously.
Anti virus software has been breaking stuff for more than a decade. There will always be false positives, and there will always be stuff that hasn't been tested, thought about, and so forth.
Of course, now, after this incident, they'll add a unittest to make sure that this exact thing doesn't happen again, and maybe add some for other music services. But hey - this is NOT something that should be thought of as wrong, foolish or whatever. These things *happen*.
Anti-virus software has signatures, heuristics, and so forth. It'll be wrong from time to time. It's actually just business as usual.
So, why is this news?
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
causing a minor annoyance to users wouldn't do anything for Palm, so why would they bother? It's probably some poor detection on the part of AVG.
AVG does not have any information on this particular virus in their virus encyclopedia
That is the case for ~99% of the viruses in their "encyclopedia".
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Anti-virus programs have false positives all the time over stupid shit.
1 - Inherently, an anti-virus can only scan against a database of known problems. New problems won't be detected.
2 - It has been demonstrated that it is VERY easy to spoof detection.
3 - AVG did far worse recently when the firewall portion of their full internet security suite installed drivers for each network connection you had. Said drivers would cause Windows to BSOD. The only solution was to uninstall AVG. I assume that would be a bigger story than a false positive.
If you're really worried about security, don't run with admin rights, run with a resident program that detects possible changes and stops them before they happen, or better yet, run Linux.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
AVG turned to fucking donkey shit after 7.5. it blows my mind people still use it. the company treats their end users like idiots, their software behaves like the malware it claims to rid your system of, and eats up a shitton of resources to boot
yet it still seems to be one of the most popular free scanners, if not the most. I don't get it
it's hard to find a decent free antivirus that doesn't nag or suck these days. iirc Avira had nag screens, and a ridiculous amount of false positives. the least crap one I've used seems to be avast!. it seems to detect a decent amount of viruses, keeps out of the way, and and doesn't eat up a lot of resources
Maybe it rightfully flags DRM files. Maybe they also include a rootkit. At least it would make sense to me, if their heuristic would detect sneaky encrypted files looking like normal music files.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
no false positive there
My antivirus is Avastly superior to AVG, but I don't use iTunes anyway. Sansa ftw.
... Do they still exist ?
I'm sorry, I've been using Linux for 5 years now, so I'm a little bit ahead of your world...
Just tell me when you get to the package manager revolution, or at least the trustful and reliable software era.
*no offense.*
Segmentation Fault in "Life, Universe and Everything" at line 42. Don't Panic.
From the summary: One user there had an interesting thought: 'Maybe Palm has some shares in AVG...MUAHAAAA!!'
It's nearly culpable negligence (IMO, lack of due care) to repeat a statement like that one, which has no basis in reality, and could significantly tarnish AVG's reputation.
Please see this quote:
Fair enough, but rating should be weighted in a meaningful way.
A new app with 1 person rating it 1 or 5 stars shouldn't count as much as 1,000 ratings of 4 stars.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Avast is great, never any issues or any real nags. I did just get a suggestion to visit a blog page where the CEO chatters a bit but they seem to be in good shape at the moment...
Just get the palm pre, it fixes all the bad things of the iphone while keeping all the good things.
Not them again! I suppose they'll hit Linux next...Don't know how, but anything can happen...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I took it upon myself to drop them (AVG) a quick note telling them that I was hard pressed to pay/trust my welfare to a company that did not know what its own viruses were. And then I discovered that they really did not want to talk to or hear from me. It took me almost 10 minutes to find a form I could actually successfully type something into (Try it yourself!). And to do so I had to choose some very odd options from the dropdowns as they had NOTHING related to simply giving them feedback or "Other". It is a shame as I have been doing rather well with their free version.
AVG Free breaks Win7 RC1 on 2 of my machines that run it. Locks up explorer constantly even doing simple shell things like opening a toolbar I have created on the taskbar. After 3 weeks I couldn't take it anymore and now am testing Avast free.
It's part of the natural life cycle of anti-virus software. Anti-virus software gets really good -> geeks and techies jump on the bandwagon -> they spread this to their non-techie friends -> AV software gets bloated/crappy over time -> geeks abandon it slowly over time -> regular consumers continue to use it forever until a geek comes along to force them to use the current hotness.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
False positive from a DLL? That is nothing ...
How about TrendMicro giving a false positive on a valid PHP plain text file that is part of Drupal!
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
The problem of misidentification will continue to grow as the number of unique malware items are identified. It is getting to the point that software publishers need to start submitting information about their official published versions to AV projects to avoid misidentification. Such information would include size, checksum + md5sum + sha1sum or something along those lines. In this way operating system files and commonly used software could avoid misidentification I think.
but you're asking it to be humorless.
Not only is the joke topical (in the sense it's related to another recent story) but it's made clear that it's a joke by keeping it in context (...MUAHAAAA!!).
You sir, FAIL.
Quack, quack.
I always knew that I liked AVG, but this is just the coolest! iTunes really is rather virus like.
Three Squirrels
Like the subject says dragging files into itunes does nothing. It was one of the first things I tried. Setting sync to manual gave me the message about overwriting original contents. God forbid your mp3s don't have ID3 tags because itunes sticks them all in some unknown folder instead of paying attention to the filename.
Its like people never knew how to manage mp3 files before itunes came along. How hard is it to organize the files and folders yourself? I seem to have no problems doing so. Are you keeping 100,000 files in a single folder or what?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Many people don't want to pay for their virus scanner. There really isn't so much out there in the way of good, no cost virus scanners. The ones that are good, well the companies that make them know they are good and thus charge for them. NOD32 is excellent, and ESET seems to be aware of this fact. Thus there's a trial but no free version, and the full version isn't super cheap. Their produce is quality, they want money for it.
As long as there are plenty of people who want a free virus scanner, they'll be a market for crappy scanners that don't cost anything.
http://forums.avg.com/ww.avg-free-forum?sec=thread&act=show&id=7965#post_7965
Confirmed false positive, corrected in next update.
I can't wait for the OSX version of AVG! :)
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
I hear you, and agree with a lot of this sentiment, but what on earth has this got to do with AVG breaking iTunes?
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
One is program that slows down your computer, takes up RAM and disk space, erases files, and generally ends up costing you quite a bit of money and time.
The other is a program that reproduces automatically.
I used to recommend AVG for the cheap bastards I had for clients. Between this and AVG 8 and the linkscanner fiasco I'm thinking it's time to start telling people to use something else. Suggestions?
Cartman, is that you?
A proud member of the Onion-in-Hand alliance
http://blog.iphone-dev.org/
Jailbreak it. You'll be a lot happier.
next time, i'll use Ogg
Antivirus programs don't actually do much anyway other than provide that warm, fuzzy feeling. If you run without administrator privileges and keep your machine updated, there's really no need for one.
Well, and your post is completely Troll. But it's okay, this is /. so we learn to live with that sort of thing.