AVG Labels ZoneAlarm as Malicious & Infected With Trojan

According to news reports published by TheRegister on October 16, 2008, a tricky anti-virus update from AVG Technologies wrongly tagged the popular ZoneAlarm firewall as a Trojan virus.

Security specialists at AVG Technologies stated that the wrong AVG definition flagged up ZoneAlarm containing the Agent_r.CX Trojan horse. Security company, Grisoft, which found AVG anti-virus, issued a warning that certain files of ZoneAlarm software inside zlsSetup_70_483_000_en[1].exe, a zip file containing inactive set-up files involved in Check Point's ZoneAlarm, were infected with the Agent_r.CX Trojan.

Meanwhile, the fake warning soon filled up the ZoneAlarm user forum with postings from concerned users. ZoneAlarm users, who rushed to the widely accepted anti-virus package together with the security software from Check Point, found an improperly working firewall, mysterious reports announcing infections and an incapability to reload their ZoneAlarm software.

Moreover, the problem emerged on ZoneAlarm support forums and remained until the early morning hours of Tuesday (October 14, 2008) when AVG Technologies issued a notice that the false warning was fixed. Before that, ZoneAlarm users confronting the problem managed to bypass the problem provided they knew the process of adding ZoneAlarm's directory path as exclusion to anti-virus scrutiny.

Furthermore, an AVG spokeswoman acknowledged in a statement that the company accidentally declared the Check Point's ZoneAlarm as a Trojan virus, and the detection stayed for about seven and a half hours. However, the company had resolved the issue as soon as the problem was notified to it. They had also added the software to their white list, the spokeswoman said, as reported by TheRegister on October 16, 2008.

Moreover, security specialists said that erroneous anti-virus software files do turn up within the security industry over sporadic periods of time. The AVG Technologies' case is particularly notable as it involves a blending of popular security suites that only a small number of users are inclined to run. Furthermore, false alarms commonly cause difficulties when they pronounce common JavaScript applications, or Windows systems files, for instance, as potentially malevolent, the experts explained.

Related article: APACS Reports phishing On The Rise

» SPAMfighter News - 10/27/2008