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)."

Comments

AVG is doing its job

[Norsefire]

Bad music is a virus.

It spreads like wildfire and everyone has it.

Re:AVG is doing its job

[Enderandrew]

My wife has New Kids on the Block CDs still. I'm terrified I'll catch something from her.

Re:AVG is doing its job

[davester666]

No, you're safe. I know from personal experience...I haven't caught anything from her yet.

Update

[nate_in_ME]

I actually submitted this yesterday...updates in the Apple discussion thread make it sound like everything is back to normal.

Re:Update

[saxoholic]

Yeah, AVG had a false positive on friday, several users submitted false positive reports, and the updated virus definitions yesterday fixed the problem. Nothing to see here, move along.

Conspiracy!

[girlintraining]

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.

Had This Problem Myself

[Jucius Maximus]

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.

Re:Had This Problem Myself

[Sponge Bath]

"The workaround is to disable the real-time scanner."

Or switch to a better AV product. For a while I was satisfied with AVG, but gave up after other false positive problems with it. Avira does a better job (check out http://www.av-comparatives.org/) and still has a free version.

Re:Had This Problem Myself

[adolf]

I like Avast quite a bit. It's generally fast, problem-free, and stays the hell out of the way.

Or at least, it stays out of the way once you do a few things to it:

Tell it to turn off all sounds and notifications of normalcy. And to automatically accept all new program and definition updates. And to never to bother to ask to reboot the computer (it's a Windows desktop -- it'll be rebooted soon enough for othe reasons, anyway).

After that, it just sits quietly on the taskbar unless things go awry somehow.

Re:Had This Problem Myself

[unfunk]

"The workaround is to disable the real-time scanner."

Or switch to a better AV product.

Or a better media player. iTunes on Windows is superior only to Quicktime on Windows. Both are (in terms of usability) inferior to... well, pretty much everything else.

This is a problem with AV in general.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Haha, good

[ArchieBunker]

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.

Re:Haha, good

[Sponge Bath]

"iTunes is about as useful as malware."

The ghost of Steve Jobs rattles his chains at you. (oooooohhhh...)
Yes, he is dead. Apple built an animatronic replica to placate shareholders.

Re:Haha, good

[dhovis]

Add a folder to your library, wait while itunes chugs and makes a COPY of each file before syncing.

In iTunes Preferences: Go to "Advanced". Uncheck "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library". iTunes will leave your files where they are and just index them.

Personally I like the way iTunes organizes my music and keeps the actual files out of my way, but YMMV.

Why the heck is this news?

[arcade]

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?

Re:Why the heck is this news?

[nate_in_ME]

If you read through the discussion on the Apple forums, you will probably be(I know I was) surprised at how many people uninstalled iTunes out of fear of it being infected. Of course, there were just as many that uninstalled AVG in order to keep their iTunes work.

So, while those of us here may know all about how common false positives, etc. are with AV software, reading through the now 20+ pages on Apple's site shows that the majority of iTunes users don't have the knowledge that we do.

why is AVG still a major player?

[13th seer]

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

McAffee/Norton Syndrome

[Solr_Flare]

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.

False positive on a DLL? That is nothing ...

[kbahey]

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!