Accidentally created a virus?

Question

I\'ve seen it happen reasonably often: I write an application in Delphi and when I compile it, the virus-scanner tells me that I\'ve created a virus and then immediately del

Answer 1

I would not call it a "false positive", because, strictly speaking, it is not false and the antivirus software is not "guilty" of anything in any way.

I am 99% sure, that this is the heuristic analysis acting up (I bet it detects your executable as something along the lines of win32.virus.generic - note the generic, this is a sign, that this is not in its signature db, but rather was detected by the heuristics) and, with being heuristic and all, it does not give you any kind of guarantee, that whatever it finds is malicious, it just kind of makes it known to you, that the executable is suspicious from its point of view.

The easiest solution to this would be just adding an exception for your file by name (it is always the same name, correct?). If you are uncomfortable with this, you should, probably, make your antivirus software prompt you before taking action so you can make it skip your file manually.

In general, I've found coding in windows with antivirus software somewhat irritating (don't do it much nowadays, but still), especially if the said software is in "paranoid mode". Irritating as it is, though, it is unavoidable (IMO).