mIRC Home    About    Download    Register    News    Help

Print Thread
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 1
S
Mostly harmless
OP Offline
Mostly harmless
S
Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 1
I have had mIRC installed for about a week now and out of the blue my Trend Micro Internet Security program detected that the installer for mIRC is a trojan. I don't believe that it is, especially since I downloaded the program from the mIRC download page.
Why would it be seen as a Trojan by TMIS? Anyone else experience this? Or is TMIS just being "over protective"?

Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 8,330
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 8,330
It is not unusual for antivirus apps to incorrectly identify mIRC. In most, it's marked as "potentially unwanted" which basically means that if you installed it yourself, it's safe, but it's warning you in case you didn't install it yourself it is possible to create bad scripts with it.

In the case of the installer, depending on what version you have, some of the 7.x versions have a "utility" built in that can display ads for other software (similar to how an installer might ask if you want to install Google Toolbar). Even though it's disabled and not being used, it still is included in the installer and some antivirus may incorrectly mark it for that.

The best thing you can do is to send the file to your antivirus company so they can get it removed from their detection in their next version.


Invision Support
#Invision on irc.irchighway.net
Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 5,512
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 5,512
This is called a false-positive and usually happens when an anti-virus company updates their virus definition files without checking them properly. The result is that the anti-virus software starts incorrectly detecting some applications as trojans or viruses. Unfortunately this happens all the time. For example, a few days ago Microsoft Security Essentials started detecting Google Chrome as a trojan and recommended that users delete it.

Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 61
H
Babel fish
Offline
Babel fish
H
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 61
I also use Trend. I've seen occasional false positives, but not recently. I think it's Ad-Aware that's falsey reporting positives on some ancient mIRC installation files that I have hanging around. As I understand it, it's due to the compression scheme Khaled used to use, but no longer does. I suggest you resolve the issue by reporting it to Trend and asking them to respond with the results of their checking. I'm sure we'd all be interested in what they have to say. I also use other AV and anti-trojan and anti-scumware programs on a regular basis. Only Ad-Aware regularly reports mIRC installer as a trojan, and they haven't responded to my reports.

Last edited by Handle_With_Care; 08/10/11 11:15 PM.

mIRC 7.51, 64-bit Win-7/SP1 Home Premium
IRC Operator irc.Prison.NET
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
A
Hoopy frood
Offline
Hoopy frood
A
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 3,918
Indeed, the best way to solve false positives is to be vocal about it with the AV company itself, in this case Trend Micro. If they get enough complaints they will likely adjust the checks.


- argv[0] on EFnet #mIRC
- "Life is a pointer to an integer without a cast"

Link Copied to Clipboard