> Each time that a popular AntiVirus software begins to detect one of my utilities as Virus or Trojan, my email is flooded with messages from worried people that think my Web site is infected with Viruses. Some of them even blame me that I spread Viruses through my Web site.
I wonder if there is a defamation/libel type of lawsuit here. Anti virus vendors are making false accusations.
>I wonder if there is a defamation/libel type of lawsuit here. Anti virus vendors are making false accusations.
Some (many? most?) will report these applications as 'potentially unwanted applications' (PUAs) and sidestep the issue of blame or malicious intent, often asking the user if they want to proceed rather than just denying access.
Malware authors often incorporate legitimate software into their malware - e.g. Nir Sofer's Mail PassView and Web PassView are used in Emotet spam bot to harvest user credentials. Usually such files are marked as "Potentially unsafe software" by analysts, or in some cases could be detected as part of a malware family by AV companies' automated detection tools.
Another thing is that actions malware take and actions legitimate "power user" software takes are separated only by context. Thus automated behavior analysis is always going to produce false positives.
Yep. Malware is constantly repacked/encrypted. It is impractical/impossible to write static unpacking engines for every type of malware packing technique, so behavioral analysis engine is a must (btw, behavioral engines still detect malware using signatures).
I wonder if there is a defamation/libel type of lawsuit here.
If that would ever fly, I want to take action against mail servers that tell me my mail is "spam" when it clearly isn't and was double opted-in by their users :-D
I wonder if there is a defamation/libel type of lawsuit here. Anti virus vendors are making false accusations.