uTorrent Marked as Trojan by Avast Antivirus

Written by Ernesto on April 28, 2008 

Thousands 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.

utorrent trojan

Previously: Pivotal Canadian BitTorrent Showdown Looming

Next: Book Authors See BitTorrent As a Promotional Tool

71 Responses

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51 Apr 28, 2008 at 23:50 by pja4008

There tests were based on virus detection,system resources,and how fast they update.

52 Apr 29, 2008 at 00:23 by Wired

@14yearold
LOL you think AVG is a good antivirus program and NOD32 sucks? Pull your head out of your ass.

53 Apr 29, 2008 at 00:29 by Restero

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?

54 Apr 29, 2008 at 10:17 by Anonymous

#45 LLLLOOOLLL, pure gold!

55 Apr 29, 2008 at 10:44 by ejonesss

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.

56 Apr 29, 2008 at 15:44 by Anonymous

[quote comment="362088"]Yay, first.

I really have nothing to add to the article though. Glad the problem was fixed.[/quote]

no your second …

57 Apr 29, 2008 at 17:02 by great googley moogley

should have been on a mac..

58 Apr 29, 2008 at 18:41 by Anonymous

[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…

59 Apr 29, 2008 at 20:43 by Tim

Fuck you all, avast is great.

60 Apr 30, 2008 at 01:44 by Anonymous

use bitlord smart asses

61 Apr 30, 2008 at 07:51 by Erevos

Maybe the so called “trojan” is the web service interface capabilities?

62 Apr 30, 2008 at 09:27 by xxx

[quote comment="362152"]Lol only fags use Avast[/quote]
yeah only fags, lames, BTW? AVAST SUCK!

63 Apr 30, 2008 at 18:03 by Alley

Oh, right, and then AVG has tons of false positives lmao :P

64 Apr 30, 2008 at 18:52 by Andrew

And they called me crazy for switching to Linux and using nTorrent.

65 May 01, 2008 at 03:45 by in.cog.nito

@2 “Bob”
only faggots claim ‘first’

66 May 02, 2008 at 15:50 by YABRI

Avira antivirus is THE BEST!!!!!!

67 May 05, 2008 at 18:18 by da fank

works fine here :)

68 May 09, 2008 at 20:19 by ForYouToEnvy

AVG??? Iv tried AVG and and spybot S&D found loads of crap AVG missed…. not had any probs since i started using avast

69 May 25, 2008 at 09:18 by Shroomey

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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