by jhines » Tue May 26, 2009 8:39 am
Hi Erin,
The detection from Norton 360 is a false positive as there is no virus or malware in Presence 2.3. Apparently, the compiler I use is also one frequently used by malware writers and produces code similar to theirs. I've submitted the program to 'virus-total.com', which ran 20 anti-virus scanners on it, and 8 out of 20 scanners produced false positives, and 12 reported that the file was 'clean'.
The solution (for now) is, first to make sure you have the latest version of Presence since each time I recompile the program, it changes the executable code, causing different results from the anti-virus programs. Second, tell your anti-virus program to ignore this file (presence_int.exe). There should be an option in the program somewhere to exclude selected files from the anti-virus scan. With the anti-virus program I use (Symantec), it's done by , clicking the 'configure' menu, then clicking 'exclude selected files and folders', then click the 'exclusions' button. Next, click 'files/folders', then find the c:\Program Files\Presence folder, and check the file, presence_int.exe.
The long-term solution is for me to contact some of the anti-virus vendors to see if there is something I can do to the code to prevent the false-positive detections. For this to happen, it helps if users can let me know which anti-virus program they use which gives the false-positive, and the date they downloaded Presence.
Cheers,
Jim