Avast! detects autorun.inf from IPOD as Hazmat

[SaintessHeart]

I do know for one that my Ipod nano (3G) does not come with a virus, but Avast! thinks so.

It has been a long time since I used Avast! because of its netnanny tendencies and hard to workaround blocker (which blocks practically all of my test notepad-made registry modifiers).

Does anyone else receive the message that Avast! detects a virus in your Ipod as autorun.inf? I think the program is just an autostart to sync the Ipod to the PC or Itunes.

[Vexx]

I haven't had any issues with Avast! .... (though we seem to have had a couple of complaints in this forum). Ya'll do *report* these problems to the Avast! team, don't ya'll?

Also, Avast! comes with switches to turn off almost anything that annoys one. (I don't use a number of the providers since I don't run the MS crap-apps they monitor).

[chikorita157]

Another suggestion is to switch to another Anti-virus. Most of the free ones like AVG and Avast! are going to have problems with false-positives as proved in this Anti-virus report.

Kaspersky and NOD32 have the least amount of false positives and have a good detection rate, but it will cost money.

Another suggestion is disabling Autorun so it will prevent the auto-installation of malware when a USB storage device is plugged in

[Vexx]

aye, auto-run should be turned off anyway (I believe win7 has it off by default ... finally)

[Shadow Kira01]

False-positives do occur sometimes but to hear that it came from Ipod is just rather rare..

[Ledgem]

Is it a new iPod? You can't reject the possibility that the factory that made it didn't become compromised, and that any iPods produced from there aren't infected. It's happened with plenty of other devices, after all.

[chikorita157]

There was a incident a long time ago when 1% of the iPod 5G were shipped with a Windows Virus, but I highly doubt that the most recent iPods would ship with a virus today...

Again, free virus-scans still have a high number of false positive which could be a hassle, even if the file doesn't have a virus (which is why I avoid them and use commercial ones which have fewer false positives, but it's not 100%.)

[-KarumA-]

Originally Posted by chikorita157

Another suggestion is to switch to another Anti-virus. Most of the free ones like AVG and Avast! are going to have problems with false-positives as proved in this Anti-virus report.

Kaspersky and NOD32 have the least amount of false positives and have a good detection rate, but it will cost money.

Another suggestion is disabling Autorun so it will prevent the auto-installation of malware when a USB storage device is plugged in

no need to switch because of a false positive, AVG has even more false positive alerts than Avast
although AVG is good it isn't the best, specially when it comes to possible viruses on usb sticks etc. I plug a virus corrupted stick in my AVG protected pc, nothing is alerted and my pc was fcked so many times it decided it didn't want to boot up normally anymore, I plugged it into a pc downstairs with Avast, whamo usb gets frozen in action and I get the virus alerts AVG wasn't giving me and was allowed to wipe it clean without getting infected

for a free anti-virus stick to Avast no need to switch cause of a false positive lol
and if you are very hesitant, send the file to

http://www.virustotal.com/

you send the file you are suspicious of and then it'll be analyzed and you can see the results of various anti virus and their thoughts on it, is it a virus or not lol

[SaintessHeart]

There are certain memory devices that have a separate partition that store the autorun.inf (i.e sandisk) so it could run faster. Some virus scanners tend to ignore that "hidden" partition and thus it is a easy target for virus attacks.

Mine is a Ipod nano 3G.

As far as I know I have been charging my Ipod by my bedside outlet charger since a few months ago, rarely add songs to its already non-exhaustive songlist of anime songs. My computer is a new one so it pretty is much has less viruses than before, and I never enable autorun functions.

I checked, it is a false positive. Ran a Norton scan from my sis's laptop (without her permission) and found nothing suspicious.

Anyone wants to buy my Ipod so I can get a PSP 3k?

[sa547]

I'm suspicious of AUTORUN.INFs because for some years now it's always a favorite jump-off point for executable viruses. Deleting the AUTORUN.INF file will not hurt your iPod.

[chikorita157]

What you can also do is to restore the iPod to the factory settings, which will wipe out everything including the viruses, but you have to put your music and playlists back on after that.

Also disable Disk Use so the iPod wont show up as a storage device.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by chikorita157

What you can also do is to restore the iPod to the factory settings, which will wipe out everything including the viruses, but you have to put your music and playlists back on after that.

Also disable Disk Use so the iPod wont show up as a storage device.

Erm, autorun.inf IS part of the factory settings.

Well that is what I did. I absolutely detest ITunes as a music player as compared to winamp (can't play vorbis / flac files without the damned addon, etc), but inserting music using winamp can cause file and playlist corruption.

[chikorita157]

iTunes is horrible on Windows like most programs Apple develops on Windows, but it's alot better on the Mac side... which is why I primarily use iTunes on Mac OS X most of the time...

My only suggestion is disabling Autorun so the virus scan don't go crazy every time you plug in your iPod. Here is a guide in doing it: http://antivirus.about.com/b/2008/03...le-autorun.htm

Thank god Autorun is disabled on portable USB device on Windows 7

[Shadow Kira01]

Sometimes, the issue is that there are quite a number of false positive cases but other times, they really aren't false positives even though many people claim as otherwise: