Norton 360 reports Calibre 0.7.31 as behaving suspiciously

[watchintv]

Just updated to 0.7.31 and when I restarted calibre norton 360 immediately popped up and announced that calibre was behaving suspiciously.

Unfortuantleyly Norton didn't say what calibre was doing to casue it to show such an alert.

It rated calibre as high risk, report below

Any idea why this would be the case?

Not Available

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On computer as of
11/27/2010 at 4:26:22 PM
Last Used:
11/27/2010 at 4:27:56 PM
Startup Item: No
Launched: Yes
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Very Few Users
Fewer than 10 users in the Norton Community have used this file.
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High
This file risk is high.
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Threat Details
SONAR Protection monitors for suspicious program activity on your computer.
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Origin

Downloaded from Not Available
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URL Not Available
UNTESTED

Source
calibre.exe
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File Actions
File: c:\program files\calibre2\calibre.exe
Removed
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File Thumbprint:
Not Available
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[kovidgoyal]

norton 360 is an ass

Seriously, see http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual...a-virus-trojan

[watchintv]

Quite possibly (Norton 360 is an ass), however, it is not saying that there is a virus, but that this new version of Calibre seems to be doing something "suspicious" that the previous version (0.7.29) I had was not. So it would seem that something changed since 0.7.29 that has casued Norton 360 to be conncerned.

Perhaps the switch to python 2.7 has casued some behaviour change at startup ?

[kovidgoyal]

The point is that whatever the behavior change is, it is benign, so norton 360 shouldn't be flagging it.

The number of times that various anti-virus *cough*money spinning*cough* programs have flagged calibre over the years is not funny. Just search for antivirus in this forum.

[greenapple]

My Avast antivirus has absolutely no issue with Calibre whatsoever.

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

norton 360 is an ass

Seriously, see http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual...a-virus-trojan

no, seriously, kovid, tell us how you feel about Norton..

Oh.....and welcome to MobileRead, watchintv........

[watchintv]

Your point is well taken, however I don't think you should just write off such products, after all there is allways the possibility that software is contaminated after writing the code (e.g. the compiler, malware on build system, or the webserver, or on my PC, etc.)

Sometimes it does make sense to check out the smoke to see if there is realy a fire.
A number of big software names have managed to release software that was infected post build, it is unfortunate, but it happens.

[watchintv]

Desertgrandma, Thanks for the welcome !

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Mayhap Kovid needed to supplement his income? (Just kidding!)

I would tell you all how I feel about Norton 360 (or any other Symantec product with the possible exception of Norton Ghost) but Mama told me not to use those words (and I wouldn't want to give the MR censors a field day).

[vaughnmr]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

I would tell you all how I feel about Norton 360 (or any other Symantec product with the possible exception of Norton Ghost) but Mama told me not to use those words (and I wouldn't want to give the MR censors a field day).

I agree completely, the OP should avoid Norton like the plague.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by vaughnmr

I agree completely, the OP should avoid Norton like the plague.

Actually, methinks the plague would be preferable.

[kovidgoyal]

I would have put a lot more credence into Norton's report if it had identified an actual virus/trojan rather than "suspicious behavior". To me anti-virus programs flagging "suspicious behavior" is like the teachers in my grade school who would always assume I was up to no good because I much preferred sitting in the last row.

And then if it does find what it considers to suspicious behavior, it doesn't even bother to tell you what that behavior is/why it is considered suspicious.

The mere fact that norton 360 dislikes 0.7.31 is not nearly enough to get me to take it seriously.

[desertgrandma]

Okay lets clarify something here.

Does paying for a antivirus program such as Norton or McAfee, give you anymore protection than say Avg or Avast which are free?

Or should I start a new thread?

[JSWolf]

Norton is not an ass. It's not that good. Norton tries to do things it thinks are what should be done and gets it wrong too many times. So you ed up with stuff not working or false positives.

And one problem is that if you do not uninstall Norton properly then you may botch your system. You have to find out how to remove it before you do so your system will work after you uninstall Norton. It gets in an digs in rather well.

I use Comodo and while it pops up for thing it doesn't understand, once I tell it what it's asking about is ok, it doesn't bother me again.

Avoid Norton like you would Windows ME. Norton also is heavy on system resources. It take too much memory and can noticeably slow down the system.

As for AVG Free, it works well sort of. It works well except for the fact that when they went to version 8, they slowed it down too much to be useful. I noticed the system slow down when I went from version 7 to version 8.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

AVG free used to be good but recently, as JSWolf pointed out, it is now a resource hog. Avast free is still good and a lot of people like MSE (Microsnot Security Essentials). Team either of those with some good free antimalware programs, like Malawarebytes, SuperAntiSpyware, etc. and do regular scans, you will be fine.