Avast and AVG antivirus false positives

[Juan Conejero]

We have recent reports that Windows users trying to install the latest version 1.8.6.1457 of PixInsight receive virus detection alerts with the Avast and AVG antivirus applications.

We run enterprise level virus protection solutions on all of our development and testing Windows machines. Currently we use McAfee Internet Security and McAfee LiveSafe. In addition, all of our installer packages, as well as all executable and .dll files included in these packages, are digitally signed with our Extended Validation (EV) code signing certificate. Changing any of these files in any way should of course invalidate the signatures.

So the chances are extremely low of a virus infecting our installer packages. For that to have happened, there would have to be a virus present on your system when you were downloading our installer, so that the virus could infect our files. You can always check if an installer package is valid by comparing the SHA-1 checksum computed for your downloaded file with the checksum published on our Software Distribution system. For your convenience, the SHA-1 checksums for the current 1.8.6.1457 packages are the following:

PI-windows-x64-01.08.06.1457-20190122-t.exe     5e445749306bafe717ca667b2c8dbcbfd83c3e8c
PI-windows-x64-01.08.06.1457-20190122-c.exe     4f6b780c05daea7c046c56106ea097bbe285c3dd
PI-macosx-x64-01.08.06.1457-20190122-t.pkg      1fbe90db4fbe9f2ea77c2c33cdcf846064659077
PI-macosx-x64-01.08.06.1457-20190122-c.pkg      754c7904bc4090030d8ad2aedcbee2475f341ca4
PI-linux-x64-01.08.06.1457-20190122-t.tar.gz    427533fab7c955c89f9139c25dfd06372ac14e1f
PI-linux-x64-01.08.06.1457-20190122-c.tar.gz    2c0620c00a8dae84f791424a8a3ac951ecb4818d

So these are just false positives. I encourage you to check the installer packages with a more reliable virus protection software.

[tomb18]

Hi,
I just ran into this on two machines.  On one which is brand new, and does not have avast installed, the download runs and then at the end of the download, there appears that 6 mB or so are added to the file and then chrome reports download failed.
On the other machine, which has Avast installed, the same happens but then reports the Trojan 32 virus.
So on both it is not possible to run since the download fails.
Regards, Tom

[msmythers]

For the Windows file I checked both a copy I downloaded when Ver.1457 became available. This file had been compressed and then removed to an external backup system. I also just now downloaded the file from PixInsight to check the validity of the most recent on the PI server. Both files have the correct checksum and the filesize is correct.

I am running Windows 10 with Windows Security only.

For reference the checksum image shows in the top temp folder the backed up copy and the second bottom the current downloaded file.


Mike

[llpastro]

TheSkyX also had this problem a while back until they got MS to deflag it as having a virus.

Larry