AVG false alarm tags iTunes as Trojan

Stephen Withers
Monday, 24 August 2009 05:39

Business IT - Security

A false positive detection by the AVG anti-virus software has put many iTunes users in a spin.

A recent update to AVG's virus database resulted in iTunes being misreported as a Trojan called Small.BOG.

The company soon released another update that prevented the false alarm.

By that time, a considerable number of users had posted messages about the problem on AVG's and Apple's forums, as well as third-party sites.

One peer-suggested workaround was to add the relevant directories to AVG's exceptions list - we hope that everyone that did that remembers to remove them after updating AVG, or they'll be leaving a hole that the bad guys may be able to exploit.

Once the AVG update is installed, iTunes can be restored to life by removing it from AVG's Virus Vault. Step-by-step instructions can be found here.

Such false alarms are worrying for users and can result in the unnecessary deletion of files.

But AVG isn't the only AV vendor to fall foul of false alarms. Over the years, several well-known names in the industry - including Kaspersky, McAfee, Sophos and Symantec - have run into similar problems.