Bits from Bill

Technology thoughts leaking from the brain of "Bill Pytlovany"

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Panda Claims WinPatrol is a Virus

First, it was Symantec’s NAV 2007 incorrectly recommending that folks remove WinPatrol when it’s 100% compatible.  Now, we have Panda Internet Security 2007 telling users it found a virus called Dialer.IQQ inside WinPatrol.exe. We just can’t get a break.

I have contacted support at PandaSoftware but haven’t heard back. Obviously, there is no virus in WinPatrol.exe.  In fact, there is no dial-up code of any kind used by WinPatrol. Doing a search on Dialer.IQQ comes up with nothing

Worried that someone else might be reporting problems based on some signature file, I ran WinPatrol.exe through a great free service called VirusTotal.  This service allows you to submit suspicious files and it will show you the results of over a dozen known AntiMalware programs.

This is the results from running our latest WinPatrol.exe file.

False Positive report by Panda Security
Click image for larger view

It would appear PandaSoftware is alone in their assessment of WinPatrol and need to fix something.
VirusTotal is a great service that you can check out at http://www.virustotal.com/

 Update: 12/22/2006  5:08 PM  Response from PandaSecurity.

Dear WinPatrol,
I will be working in our lab to recreate this incident and resolve the issue; however, I will need to know which version of Panda you are encountering this problem with.  Please provide the full version of the software and upon retrieval of this information, I will begin the test.

Share on Facebook


10 Comments:

Blogger Corrine said...

It appears that I couldn't "create a link" because I've switched my Blogger account to the "new" (formerly called Beta Blogger) Blogger and Bits from Bill is still the "old" version.

False/Positives happen. IMO, its carelessness when well known software like WinPatrol are miss identified.

Attention Panda & WinPatrol Users

9:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bill P.
I've used WinPatrol for years with no problems what so ever. It does alert me when something is trying to start up.
It also gives me a way of stopping
programs I don't want to run.
I also use site advisor even before McAfee bought it. It
gives your program the green light
100%. What I'm saying to people who
do not know your product is its well received.

John

12:03 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm afraid I panicked and uninstalled my WinPatrol Plus. Never imagined that WP would tolerate malware, but figured that some pinhead managed to do some corruption. My own fault for not checking here, first.

So,err, how can I reinstall my WinPatrol.

1:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

WinPatrol identified as Malware by BitDefender!

I just about dropped off my chair this morning when I checked my overnight log report and discovered that WinPatrol was identified as malware and removed! I sent the report to BitDefender to get this fixed. A snapshot of the report is shown below:
Summary:

C:\Program Files\BillP Studios\WinPatrol\WinPatrol.exe Infected: DeepScan:Generic.Malware.SVWk!.E2291F8A
C:\Program Files\BillP Studios\WinPatrol\WinPatrol.exe Disinfection failed
C:\Program Files\BillP Studios\WinPatrol\WinPatrol.exe Moved
Since I could not find a way to leave an e-mail with the entire report; I have posted this on the blog so that Bill can see it.

LC

9:28 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

AntiVir is now reporting winpatrol.exe as a trojan -> TR/Agent.140480

7:49 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm also getting what appears to be a false positive with Kaspersky anti-virus. It's reporting Porn-Dialer.Win32.Agent.aw on both Winpatrol and WinPatrolEx

I'd love to get some confirmation on this since Scotty is running the risk of getting quarantined now (?)

12:48 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Yup, I can confirm you're getting a false positive.

See today's post http://billpstudios.blogspot.com/2007/06/do-all-signitures-come-from-kaspersky.html

Bill

3:46 PM  
Blogger Jen said...

I want to say it was around June 6th that Avast Antivirus had a rather large update package [meaning that it took more than 30 seconds to download, haha]. Immediately afterward it flagged WinPatrol as a Trojan Malware. I knew this had to be incorrect since it occurred after I downloaded the latest updates, so I decided to research, figuring that WinPatrol's abilities to override programs that love to auto-start as part of windows might make it appear as a 'virus'... Since I still have my installer bundle, [and because I couldn't get the virus siren to stop when I left it alone], I decided it was safe to let it remove winpatrol since I can put it right back after researching. Having been out of town since this virus confusion, I haven't been able to thoroughly research until today. Lo and behold, I see that there are plenty of other anti-virus programs that have been doing the same thing for more than a couple of years.

I thought I'd go ahead and add my false positive onto this list here. Upon trying to reinstall, the virus warning came up again, and the 'virus' was logged as Win32:Agent-XWT and finds it in this file path:

Program Files\BillP Studios\WinPatrol\Winpatrol.728

This was during re-installation though, so I don't know if that's perhaps a file that gets removed upon full install. When I removed it with the virus scanner initially, I do believe that it was identifying the actual .exe file as the trojan/malware. I'm going to see if I can figure out how to send a support ticket to Avast since I really don't want to keep getting a virus alert.

I've been using WinPatrol for years -- it is definitely an amazing program. I knew that there had to be some sort of mistake when it was flagged as a virus. And if it truly were a trojan, well I've had it for so many years that its a bit late to try and save myself from it *now*, hahahaha!

10:52 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bill: I've been using WinPatrol for quite some time trouble-free. I love it!. Suddenly, avast! anti virus (home edition) is reporting it as a trojan. (Win32:Agent-XWT). I've read your blog and have chosen to keep your program. Who in the industry did you uupset? It seems like wveryone is trying to gang up on you. Thanks for the free use of WinPatrol. It's a keeper.

3:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

FWIW, McAfee FreeScan is also reporting WinPatrol.exe as containing a virus (Generic.dx to be specific).

Screw McAfee, I'm keeping WinPatrol :)

11:43 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home