False positive trojan detection

[David Cortesi]

I am distributing an app built with pyinstaller and a user reported
that his AVG antivirus would not allow him to execute the app because
it "had a trojan." This is surely the same as reported on this list 4
Sept, see also ticket #619.

In investigating this I installed the latest level of Parallels
internet security on the Parallels VM where I build the windows
version of the app. This AV system (Kaspersky 13.something) also
detects the "Swrort" trojan in
pyinstaller-r2000\support\loader\Windows-32bit\run.exe and runw.exe.

This is unfortunate because now I can no longer run pyinstaller on
windows at all! As soon as it tries to open run.exe during a build,
Kaspersky steps in and deletes the file, and pops up a message about
how it saved me from this trojan.

For what it's worth, the Microsoft Malicious Software removal program
scanned the system and found no problems.

Whatever it is in run.exe and runw.exe that are triggering this false
positive needs to be fixed. Windows is basically dead in the water for
now.

I have put the above info in a comment on ticket #619 but thought I'd
run it by the mailing list in case anyone has any idea how to work
around it.

[Martin Zibricky]

The temporarily workaround could be trying any executable packager, like
upx or any other from the following list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_compression

Post by David Cortesi
I am distributing an app built with pyinstaller and a user reported
that his AVG antivirus would not allow him to execute the app because
it "had a trojan." This is surely the same as reported on this list 4
Sept, see also ticket #619.
In investigating this I installed the latest level of Parallels
internet security on the Parallels VM where I build the windows
version of the app. This AV system (Kaspersky 13.something) also
detects the "Swrort" trojan in
pyinstaller-r2000\support\loader\Windows-32bit\run.exe and runw.exe.
This is unfortunate because now I can no longer run pyinstaller on
windows at all! As soon as it tries to open run.exe during a build,
Kaspersky steps in and deletes the file, and pops up a message about
how it saved me from this trojan.
For what it's worth, the Microsoft Malicious Software removal program
scanned the system and found no problems.
Whatever it is in run.exe and runw.exe that are triggering this false
positive needs to be fixed. Windows is basically dead in the water for
now.
I have put the above info in a comment on ticket #619 but thought I'd
run it by the mailing list in case anyone has any idea how to work
around it.

[Martin Zibricky]

Post by David Cortesi
Whatever it is in run.exe and runw.exe that are triggering this false
positive needs to be fixed. Windows is basically dead in the water for
now.

Or another workaround is trying the debug version of bootloader
run_d.exe and runw_d.exe. I think these two might not be marked as false
positive.

[claudio canepa]

Post by David Cortesi
I am distributing an app built with pyinstaller and a user reported
that his AVG antivirus would not allow him to execute the app because
it "had a trojan." This is surely the same as reported on this list 4
Sept, see also ticket #619.

One or two days after the false positive reported at October 11 [0] my exe
was deemed clean by AVG 2013 free.
Used the exe some times since then and all was clear.
Just for completion, with AVG updated to today, my exe and the run.exe from
pyinstaller 2.0 stayed clean.

Could it be that your user needs to update the AVG database ? Normally that
is on auto, but who knows.

Post by David Cortesi
In investigating this I installed the latest level of Parallels
internet security on the Parallels VM where I build the windows
version of the app. This AV system (Kaspersky 13.something) also
detects the "Swrort" trojan in
pyinstaller-r2000\support\loader\Windows-32bit\run.exe and runw.exe.

Surely Kaspersky has some way to report false positives, it may be worth a
try. (AVG response was fast, don't know about Kaspersky)

[0] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.pyinstaller/5282

Cheers

[David Cortesi]

Post by claudio canepa
Surely Kaspersky has some way to report false positives, it may be worth a
try. (AVG response was fast, don't know about Kaspersky)

http://support.kaspersky.com/virlab/helpdesk.html

One of the options in the dropdown subject list is "False alarm on a file"