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Demo detected as Adware.Adblaster by Norton

Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 7:39 pm
by Ubbax
I've had the Starshatter Demo installed for a month or more but have yet to get around to it.

Twice a week Nortons AntiVirus 2004 is set to do full system scans & auto-remove any threats on my PCs. I returned from lunch today and found the Norton summary displayed on my desktop. I was quite suprised to see it had flagged & removed Starshatter.exe as Adware.Adblaster. Following the link Norton AntiVirus provided took me to the following page:

Security Response: Adware.Adblaster

My first guess is that Nortons is detecting the Starshatter.exe as a false positive since up until Symantecs Thursday Virus Definition update it had never been detected before. I never found any of the files listed in that link on my system but then I've yet to run Starshatter.exe either.

I uploaded a Gif of Nortons Detection Screen to this post and clicked "Embed picture in post" but it doesn't appear to display. [edited to add: Gif displays fine just not when you preview your post]

Hopefully Milo or the powers that be will see this and address the issue.

Ubbax

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RE: Demo detected as Adware.Adblaster by Norton

Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:54 pm
by Erik Rutins
Absolutely a false positive. Norton is rather infamous for these misidentifications. There is no adware, spyware, etc. in any of our releases or demos.

Regards,

- Erik

RE: Demo detected as Adware.Adblaster by Norton

Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 10:16 pm
by Ubbax
Thank you for the prompt reply Erik.

I was pretty sure it was a false positive. I've tried many of your Demos and have a few of the Matrix Games releases and never before had a problem.

I notified Nortons about the false positive. Perhaps you should do the same, it would carry more weight coming from Matrix Games. Symantec usually responds fairly well to issues of this type. Knowing about this issue is also likely to help them adjust the algorithim preventing such false positives in the future, be it your Demo or others Demos/Games.

Once again thanks for the response. Here's to Matrix Games continued success.

Ubbax