uTorrent Marked as Trojan by Avast Antivirus
Written by Ernesto on April 28, 2008Thousands of uTorrent users got a worrying message from their antivirus software recently. Their favorite BitTorrent client was recognized as a trojan by Avast, and deleted form their computers. Attempts to redownload the software from uTorrent.com resulted in the same trojan warning.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with uTorrent. The application somehow got listed in Avast’s list of trojans, resulting in a false positive. uTorrent 1.7.7 was mistakenly listed as “Win32:Poison-DU [Trj]“, whereas the newer Beta’s were unaffected.
Such ‘false positives’ often happen with other harmless applications - better safe than sorry- but since uTorrent doubled its user base in just 12 months and is installed on millions of computers, this problem affected a sizable number of people. It didn’t take long before the issue was reported to Avast, and after approximately 5 hours the problem was fixed.
Earlier this week it became clear that uTorrent’s WebUI (+ Azureus and TorrentFlux) were vulnerable to several exploits. Apparently the vulnerabilities in the webUI, allow outsiders to take over uTorrent and download random content onto one’s system.
uTorrent developer Greg Hazel told TorrentFreak that he is aware of the issue and working on a fix. For now, the BitTorrent client itself is perfectly safe and secure.
Previously: Pivotal Canadian BitTorrent Showdown Looming
Next: Book Authors See BitTorrent As a Promotional Tool
71 Responses
µtorrent 1.8 Beta build 9704 wasn’t considered as a trojan but the 1.7 release was.
Yay, first.
I really have nothing to add to the article though. Glad the problem was fixed.
Yeah, Avast WTF is with that?
Nice.
Thanks TF for informing us.
Well, there are those of us that still believe in conspiracy theories!
That’s why I use 1.6.1 - pre-BitTorrent Inc. :)
lol avast noobs
@bob
ur second u dick.
[quote comment="362112"]Well, there are those of us that still believe in conspiracy theories!
That’s why I use 1.6.1 - pre-BitTorrent Inc. :)[/quote]
ANd many of us don’t know why. i for one randomly take clients and check what they are doing. If they were doing anything bad, it’ll be up here quicker than you’d think.
As often as not, these conspiracy theories are put about by anti-piracy orgs. Anything they can do to sow distrust, and make people suspicious works for them. It’s a lot easier to spread rumours that so-and-so client is doing something, than it is to get the client to do it, especially if what is claimed is illegal, or severely unethical.
There’s nothing wrong with 1.7.x or the 1.8 betas so far.
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This is madness, wait or is it that riaa paid avast to tag utorrent as trojan?
http://www.hack5.blogspot.com
Lol only fags use Avast
Why is this news? Anti-malware programs always have false positives to some extent.
The only major anti-virus program that is detecting u-torrent as anything is eSafe. Check out the Virus total results here:
http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/3ae691510e8c5b10eddf050cc43e44ea
For Windows there are only two scanners that are needed and do a great job;
- clamwin (perfect for on demand right-click on donwloads etc.) http://clamwin.com/
- avira (free antivir, required for noobs who need real-time active scanning). http://free-av.com/
For both you need to go deep in the config to set it up in a way that it doesn’t annoy you. And both give you complete control over what they’re doing. µTorrent-bashing would never happen with those two.
The Bittorrent protocol is good but all the Bittorrent’s clients are pure shit.
I’ve never trusted in uTorrent I prefer Azureus.
NOD32 is so much better and it doesnt hog your resources like a lot of others…
[quote comment="362123"]@bob
ur second u dick.[/quote]
hahahaha, yeh wats with this retarded being first shit.
Norton , Mcafee , Avast , and NOD32 ..
They sucks .. no0rton - sucks
avast - sucks hard
mcafee- - it didnt find a keylogger i made
NOD32 - didnt find my keylogger
AVG - f=-ound my keylogger , medium resources , and blah blah .. it rocks.
Yeah avast sucks, it flagged the XYNTservice as a virus too, which was really annoying for my software distribution.
Avast sucks.
[quote comment="362178"]NOD32 is so much better and it doesnt hog your resources like a lot of others…[/quote]
Yeah, NOD32 is also the best to use with uTorrent. I’ve used AVG and I never got a good connection; DHT also made a lot of trouble. Since I’m using NOD32, my connection is always green and the download speed is improved :)
you are all overweight windows users. get lives, put down the sandwich and get a mac.
this isnt that big of a news story…. aol adware software marks it as a trojan too
[quote comment="362204"][quote comment="362178"]NOD32 is so much better and it doesnt hog your resources like a lot of others…[/quote]
Yeah, NOD32 is also the best to use with uTorrent. I’ve used AVG and I never got a good connection; DHT also made a lot of trouble. Since I’m using NOD32, my connection is always green and the download speed is improved :)[/quote]
avg doesnt manage your firewall so whats that gotta do with your connect?
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Help this kid out please
I doubt µTorrent has any type of malware\spyware.. Spybot certainly doesn’t pick it up..
You would think a program named Avast would not be AGAINST piracy.
i mean srsly.
Isnt that leik the only thing pirates say??
AVAST YE MAITEE!!!
[quote comment="362088"]Yay, first.
I really have nothing to add to the article though. Glad the problem was fixed.[/quote]
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[quote comment="362177"]
[...]all the Bittorrent’s clients are pure shit.
[...] I prefer Azureus.[/quote]
… which you yourself have just called “pure shit” - congratulations.
Autolame Grade: B-
(What is this - fuckhead day on TF?)
[quote comment="362217"][quote comment="362204"][quote comment="362178"]NOD32 is so much better and it doesnt hog your resources like a lot of others…[/quote]
Yeah, NOD32 is also the best to use with uTorrent. I’ve used AVG and I never got a good connection; DHT also made a lot of trouble. Since I’m using NOD32, my connection is always green and the download speed is improved :)[/quote]
avg doesnt manage your firewall so whats that gotta do with your connect?[/quote]
Nothing. He’s a tard…
best antivirus is no antivirus.. only noobs get viruses.
seriously im not kidding.
if your comp gets fucked then its useless to try and repair it anyway, its still always going to be fucked up in some weird way. Sure alot of viruses can be fixed and cleaned, but sooner or later it just gets fucked up and its faster to reformat then figure out what the hell is wrong.
sadly, with windows systems, reformat is always the best choice. you can get it so fast now you can reformat a computer to a complete backup in under 10 mins.
Hirens + fast USB + ghost image = fast recovery
Thanks for the non-news.
You can get version 1.6.1 @ filehippo.com.
AVG will spot some apps as trojans, but I think it’s the best free one.
McAfee - Norton - NOD32 - AVAST = tried them all -
YES they do suck!
Avast sucks, but I’m still using it.
You just gotta know what kind of file you just scanned and also download source of that file.
When you are aware of these you can stay calm…
fix the typo, form to from :D
+1 for AVG ;)
[quote comment="362152"]Lol only fags use Avast[/quote]
Only fags download copyrightin material.
lol get better anti virus.. avg or nothing….!!!! who ever made that antivirus should maybe fix it!
Meh, just a false positive.
WTF flagging the most used bittorrent client as a trojan LOL. Minus sales for the AVAST turds !
False positives happenes (sp?) all the time.
Comodo
Icesword
Gmer
Avast
Etc, etc.
[quote comment="362330"][quote comment="362152"]Lol only fags use Avast[/quote]
Only fags download copyrightin material.[/quote]
ok, i will responde, in anger, brainless, to some wannabe weekend internet warrior…..or not. long live the pirate bay.
[quote comment="362422"]WTF flagging the most used bittorrent client as a trojan LOL. Minus sales for the AVAST turds ![/quote]
Problem! Avast home edition is free.
[quote comment="362152"]Lol only fags use Avast[/quote]
so true nod32 ftw
Comodo AV said the Fraps.exe has a trojan, no matter what version, I dl’d a couple of diferent versionce from diferent cources.
Sorry for the crap spelling!
[quote comment="362207"]you are all overweight windows users. get lives, put down the sandwich and get a mac.[/quote]
yes, we should all buy an overpriced, un-upgradable, dumbed-down, wanna-be pc with bloated software only available at a special overpriced store.
Best way to avoid viruses? Buy shit.
[quote comment="362123"]@bob
ur second u dick.[/quote]
Yeah… I got all excited when there was a brand-new article and didn’t refresh.
HAHA my email of concern to Avast worked. They believed me and accepted my generous donation.
Consumer reports rated Kaspersky zone alarm and trend micro the best and avg was at the end of the list I’ll go with a non-profit org. that does extensive testing
There tests were based on virus detection,system resources,and how fast they update.
@14yearold
LOL you think AVG is a good antivirus program and NOD32 sucks? Pull your head out of your ass.
Why is it always Ernesto who blows unprocessed sugar up uTorrents ass?
Reference: http://torrentfreak.com/p2p-statistics-080426/
Something is wacky with this guy. First he argues: “obviously uTorrent is the most popular Bittorrent Client”
now he says: “Of course, there is nothing wrong with uTorrent.”
Angain without any proof whatsoever. In case you want to create a Torjan Horse without given proof that you did, you simply introduce a vulnerability that allows a 3rd party to get information useable in a court of what you have on your computer :)
Please Ernesto, you are getting more and more ridiculous. You didn’t question once if there may be a problem. I cannot believe this is happening.
TorrentFreak is infiltrated by RIAA and the movie industry?
#45 LLLLOOOLLL, pure gold!
this may be the work of the aa’s since to the aa’s utorrent is a piracy tool and it is possible that avast is reading an older virus revived in a legit file.
remember the sony cd copy protection bit?
in the sony cd copy protection a file was written that masked it’s self as a cd rom driver and attempting to remove it disabled the drive or something like it.
well it looks like the aa’s may be up to a similar trick by they released a virus a while back and called it by the same name as one of the dll’s or something from the utorrrent resources praying on user’s fears in hopes that anti virus programs will delete the program in an attempt to stop piracy.
[quote comment="362088"]Yay, first.
I really have nothing to add to the article though. Glad the problem was fixed.[/quote]
no your second …
should have been on a mac..
[quote comment="362191"]
avast - sucks hard
AVG - f=-ound my keylogger , medium resources , and blah blah .. it rocks.[/quote]
You’re reasoning for Avast! is vastly descriptive… In my experience, Avast! is the only AV client that can be effectively used as active protection, as it’s resource requirements are very minimal. Never had any false positives with it, never had anything get by it.
I’d like to see the system you run AVG on… I’ve tried AVG on several systems, and it can make a dual-core with 2GB RAM crawl…
Fuck you all, avast is great.
use bitlord smart asses
Maybe the so called “trojan” is the web service interface capabilities?
[quote comment="362152"]Lol only fags use Avast[/quote]
yeah only fags, lames, BTW? AVAST SUCK!
Oh, right, and then AVG has tons of false positives lmao :P
And they called me crazy for switching to Linux and using nTorrent.
@2 “Bob”
only faggots claim ‘first’
Avira antivirus is THE BEST!!!!!!
works fine here :)
AVG??? Iv tried AVG and and spybot S&D found loads of crap AVG missed…. not had any probs since i started using avast
I’ll stick to the utorrent 5.0 . I f I remember right BitTorrent Inc. owns uTorrent and hasn’t BitTorrent Inc. been cosey with RIAA. I’m good
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