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Viruses have been detected inside Panda Antivirus files

Viruses have been detected in some of the 'Panda Antivirus' files on my computer (Win95:Matyas and Win32:Kuang2 in PAV.SIG mainly). Why is this?

Cause/Details

This is a known problem. Let´s try to explain what´s going on:

Every virus can be identified, because it contains some unique signatures. Antiviral programs have their own database of those signatures. We call this database the "virus definition file". When an antiviral program scans a file for viruses, it compares all the signatures (of all viruses) in the database with the signatures in that file. If the signatures match (they are the same), the file is marked as infected.
For an antivirus program, it is important to hide this database of signatures somehow - e.g. by encrypting it. Panda Antivirus does not encrypt its virus database - the signatures inside are clearly "visible" to other antiviral programs, so they detect this file as infected (but there is actually no virus inside - only the signatures are the same).

Solution

We can´t do anything about that, only recommend not to use two or more antiviral programs at the same time, or put those files to the list of exclusions, so they will not be scanned anymore.


Article Details

Article ID:  53
Created On:  09.02.2007 10:56

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