a-squared free and FP

I recently ran a complete scan with A-squared free. It came up with over a hundred problems. Nearly all were in the downloads that were in my DL folder, and I know there is no malware in the download file.

There must be something in the exe type applications and the part of the download that does the downloading that A-Squared sees as a risk or trojan downloader.

FWIW I have run complete scans with MBAM, SAS, Avira, F-Secure, and KIS 2010 without those warnings. It is obvious to me that they are FP, and I am not sure if a-squared is worth the trouble compared to the other applications mentioned.

Regards,
Jerry

 

why dont u post this on the A-Squared forum to actually try getting it solved (if u havent already)

 

Just haven't gotten around to it. In fact such has been my experience in the past, and is the reason I never installed the free AV.
Thanks.

Regards,
Jerry

 

I feel for you. You are correct A2 Does identify an incredible amount of fps. It also does in fact identify correctly many virus s that others do not. Apparently if you run a scan the items in question are in fact reviewed by their people & if you run another scan a few days later the first thing A2 does is review the Quarantine list & restore all the FPS. I presume the rest are in fact judged Virus s. I have wondered myself if this product is worth the trouble. But you can scan from windows explorer any new files you download & it does not interfere with other AVS & you can load on a USB key as a portable so I keep it as an alternate opinion.

 

Hi Woody,

I have posed this to the EMSI forum, and will scan and see if I can put together the info they will need.
I suspect I will ditch it soon, but maybe I can give some useful info to the forum.

I need pretty simple and straightforward instructions to get such things as reports done.

To be fair I just completed a scan on my laptop, and it did not reveal any suspicious objects.

Now for this computer, and see what it does.

Regards,
Jerry


Thanks,
Jerry

 

I consider A-Squared Free a great free security scanner, but I have had false positives over the years using it. Most recently I did a 30 day trial of disk-keeper downloaded directly from diskkeepers website and scanned with an AV scanner before opening that came out clean. For those 30 days every A-Squared scan said that diskkeeper had a trojan. So I always research before deleting what A2 detects.

What did A2 call the infection? A2 identifies "riskware", which supposedly 'is not malware but carries greater risk if the system is compromised by malicious software'.

Click on custom scan in the main window, then uncheck the 'alert riskware' box and try re-scanning.

 

Thanks, I will try that. I realize that what I am calling FPs are a result of behavior that both legit and malware exhibit. For some reason MBAM, SAS, Avira, F-Secure, and KIS know the difference.
I will probably remove A-squared in time, but I want to "fool with it" a little longer.

Regards,
Jerry

 

I'd personally rather err on the side of caution than not.

Out of all the programs I use and run, a-squared free scanner has only identified burnaware free as a problem, mostly because burnaware has an optional install of the ask toolbar.

I'd keep it. Make sure you right-click and submit files to emsisoft when the results screen loads.

 

Thanks, and good points.
Regards,
Jerry

 

Someone recently posted to dancho danchev's blog, and for example, halfway down he lists a few koobface examples. I've always had a-squared detecting almost every sample I threw at it, but thought I'd click on the samples. You'll notice a-squared picks up all except for one where many other scanners don't detect.

Not saying it's the best, but it definitely is one of the best. And as it doesn't have to run in the background, use it with hitman pro, and you basically have several scanners in one (power of prevx/nod/avira/g-data). A-squared having the benefit of faster scan speeds.

I'd right-click and upload your samples to emsisoft at the results screen, or even easier, if you know they are safe, I'd add your items to the whitelist, and you shouldn't have a problem scanning. Or perform a custom scan instead of a full scan.

 

Be sure if a result is found, to not only search google, but check their malware database. One of the best around.

http://www.emsisoft.com/en/support/malware/

Every result has descriptions of what the file does to your system, many with install screenshots. Some random examples that are low risk, and you wouldn't normally know about: 1, 2, 3.

 

As I already said in another thread, I'm using A-Squared since many years, and I always had very few FP, but a great product for security.