• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Possible puzzling false positive dilemma

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Gabb

Registered
Joined
Oct 11, 2008
So my computer got a nasty IE infection of some kind and it had been 2 years since I did a full reformat so I decided to finally take the plunge. Everything was going smooth and I had installed Norton Anti virus corporate edition and did several numerous scans and my system was completely wiped clean. ( note I use windows xp SP3 that’s fully updated )

However once I installed the latest version of Spyware terminator and ran a full spyware and virus scan with Spyware terminator, my auto protect Norton alerted me to a constant stream of Trojans every 5 seconds coming from my C:\DOCUME~1\ALLUSE~1\APPLIC~1\Symantec\SYMANT~1\7.5\APTemp\ and the Trojans went by the name APQXXX.tmp ( where XXX was various numbers and letters ) and the symantic information page on the Trojan was this:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2004-021914-2822-99, it also found only 2 Trojans by the name of CLAMAV~1.CLA in the C:\DOCUME~1\User\LOCALS~1\Temp\ directory that was apparently the same Trojan as the one mentioned earlier.

Now heres the puzzling part and why I may think this is some kind of false positive that’s not discovered yet ( I did a lot of searching on google and couldn’t find others with this problem )

1. I only get the constant stream of Trojans after a full spyware and Virus scan with spyware terminator WHILE spyware terminator real time protection is enabled and the only way to stop this constant 5 second stream of Trojans is to disable the real time spyware terminator protection

2. If I do a full spyware and Virus scan with spyware terminator with spyware terminator real time disabled then I only get 2 trojans by the name of CLAMAV~1.CLA in the C:\DOCUME~1\User\LOCALS~1\Temp\ directory. ClamAV is the name of spyware terminators anti virus software and this makes me strongly suspect that Norton falsely thinking Clam AV is creating Trojans of some sort ( I know for sure it is not since Spyware terminator is reputable ): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clam_AV

3. If I do a fast spyware scan with spyware terminator I get no auto protect Trojan detection from Norton at all and I believe its because the fast spyware scan isn’t a virus scan using Clam AV

4. Even though a constant stream of Trojans are detected every 5 seconds, when I finally stop the bleeding by turning off Spyware terminator real time protection I only find 4 trojans from that one incident in the quarantine even though the history logs show a Trojan detected every 5 seconds

5. I have tested this more then 3 times to confirm the results I have listed above and its consistent every time so this isn’t a one time fluke thing

6. When I do a normal full scan with Norton it doesn’t find anything, same with Spyware terminator spyware and anti virus scan ( of course after the spyware terminator scan ill get the Norton auto protect detection of the Trojans I mentioned before )

My guess is, that the virus scan part of the spyware terminator is causing the Trojan detection from Norton since its moving a file somewhere and Norton is picking it up and quickly quarantining it. All the symptoms in the Nortons Trojan description I have never experienced and so I think it’s a misdiagnosed problem. What does everyone think? Any Feedback and comments would be especially appreciated.
 
Well, for one thing, 2 real-time scanning engines generally always result in messes. I'd stick with one or the other - probably the AV.

Don't have lots of recent experience with these products, however (I don't run AV).
 
Meh, i let Windows Defender handle spyware, and AVG handle AV, so i don't really have much that i can suggest except for upgrading to Win7 ;)
 
Back