AVG Update Breaks iTunes

nate_in_ME writes "After getting a positive from the AVG virus detector while playing music on iTunes just a few minutes ago, I did a bit of research. It appears that AVG has recently pushed an update to the virus definitions that flags every iPod/iTunes related file as being infected with the 'Small.BOG' trojan. Interestingly enough, AVG does not have any information on this particular virus in their virus encyclopedia. Discussion on the Apple forum is up to 4 pages and climbing. One user there had an interesting thought: 'Maybe Palm has some shares in AVG...MUAHAAAA!!' (on page 3)."

Update

[nate_in_ME]

I actually submitted this yesterday...updates in the Apple discussion thread make it sound like everything is back to normal.

Conspiracy!

[girlintraining]

It's a conspiracy! Or... maybe it's just that the definition for the virus in question was rushed out the door without adequate testing. How many new viruses are reported each week again? They probably don't "beta test" their definitions, and just do it in a lab. Oops. The lab machines didn't have iTunes.

Nothing to do with shares

[TrippTDF]

causing a minor annoyance to users wouldn't do anything for Palm, so why would they bother? It's probably some poor detection on the part of AVG.

Re:Why the heck is this news?

[nate_in_ME]

If you read through the discussion on the Apple forums, you will probably be(I know I was) surprised at how many people uninstalled iTunes out of fear of it being infected. Of course, there were just as many that uninstalled AVG in order to keep their iTunes work.

So, while those of us here may know all about how common false positives, etc. are with AV software, reading through the now 20+ pages on Apple's site shows that the majority of iTunes users don't have the knowledge that we do.

Avastly superior antivirus...

[kms_one]

My antivirus is Avastly superior to AVG, but I don't use iTunes anyway. Sansa ftw.

Re:Had This Problem Myself

[Billhead]

I tried Avira on two computers two months ago, and on one it was constantly trying to access the floppy drive, and that seems to be a known problem.

I'm not going to bother installing it on my other computers to see if it works, I'm going with NOD32.

False positive on a DLL? That is nothing ...

[kbahey]

False positive from a DLL? That is nothing ...

How about TrendMicro giving a false positive [baheyeldin.com] on a valid PHP plain text file that is part of Drupal [drupal.org]!

Re:Haha, good

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if I quite agree with you, but the sentiment is on the money. I recently was made an offer I couldn't refuse to buy an ipod touch, and its quite a cool device. Not quite as good as the old Creative Zen I had before, as it has no radio, but the ability to play games and read ebooks is nice. The big drawback is the need to use itunes on windows to do anything. I had got used to plugging the old zen into any of the pcs at home any drag and drop what ever onto it. Now, itunes or nothing. Do mac users have any idea how crap itunes really is, or do they all just find something better? I'm a bit spoiled with my Ubuntu laptop, as there any number of great media players available, but nothing that'll see my ipod. I had forgotten what a bunch of control freaks they are at Apple not having used a Mac for 15 years or so.

Re:Conspiracy!

[makomk]

Perhaps. iTunes also uses a bunch of highly obfuscated code with anti-reverse engineering protections, which probably increases its odds of being detected as suspicious.

I think it's time to stop recommending AVG

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to recommend AVG for the cheap bastards I had for clients. Between this and AVG 8 and the linkscanner fiasco I'm thinking it's time to start telling people to use something else. Suggestions?