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
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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!!!
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