Avast antivirus thinks Calibre is a threat

[NSILMike]

Have been running Avast and Calibre for years with no issues until now. I can create an exception, but want to let Kovid know there is some sort of issue he might need to address.
Update: Malwarebytes does not detect a threat.

[Terisa de morgan]

No, I think Avast is the program that needs to address this. I've been adding calibre-parallel.exe as an exception as far as I can remember. And there is no way the program remembers it from a version to other. That's a bad designed program from my POV.

[NSILMike]

I agree it makes more sense for Avast to address it, however that may take some time so if there is something simple Kovid can do, he may prefer that. Also Avast is very highly rated, so I am a bit surprised!

[PeterT]

Unfortunately there are being more and more issues being reported by people having issues with calibre and AVAST.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[NSILMike]

Hmmm.... I haven't seen any other than mine. And I've been running both for at least a few years... It's easy enough to exclude the detection in Avast, but we shouldn't have to. Anyway, I submitted it as a false positive to Avast.

[NSILMike]

Ademas, yo hablo castellano!

[jhowell]

It is understandable that antivirus software might flag calibre as potentially malicious. The executable is a Python interpreter that downloads and executes code on the fly (plugins). That is powerful but also inherently dangerous.

[NSILMike]

Originally Posted by jhowell

It is understandable that antivirus software might flag calibre as potentially malicious. The executable is a Python interpreter that downloads and executes code in the fly (plugins). That is powerful but also inherently dangerous.

Hmmm, that makes me curious. If you are correct then why have I been able to run both Avast and Calibre for at least a few years without any issues until today?

[BetterRed]

See this thread, https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=314865

Originally Posted by Post #4 Yesterday

Avast is stupid

BR

[NSILMike]

OK, but....
1) Avast is very highly rated by independent reviewers, like PC World, and PC Magazine.
2) I still haven't seen any explanation of why Avast trips over Calibre for some of us but not all of us.
It could be an Avast issue, but I suspect there is something in Calibre that mimics malware behavior in some way, which is why I posted here for Kovid. Clearly Calibre is not malware!

And here is my very old but similar thread: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=253087

[haertig]

Originally Posted by NSILMike

I suspect there is something in Calibre that mimics malware behavior in some way...

jhowell covered that most excellently when he said:

The executable is a Python interpreter that downloads and executes code on the fly (plugins).

IMHO, Avast is doing exactly what it's supposed to when it flags behavior like this. Even Calibre itself flags it's own behavior when you install a plugin. Calibre tells you right then and there, "Hey, this could be dangerous. Only get plugins from places you trust." (paraphrased).

If Calibre can flag it's own behavior as dangerous, Avast should also be able to flag it the same way.

Avast is not saying that Calibre is dangerous. Only that it could be dangerous. Which is 100% correct.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by NSILMike

OK, but....
1) Avast is very highly rated by independent reviewers, like PC World, and PC Magazine.
2) I still haven't seen any explanation of why Avast trips over Calibre for some of us but not all of us.
It could be an Avast issue, but I suspect there is something in Calibre that mimics malware behavior in some way, which is why I posted here for Kovid. Clearly Calibre is not malware!

And here is my very old but similar thread: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=253087

Uhh
Those also get PAID for advertising. Ya think they would make a bad review?

JD Powers is anther rating that I no longer trust. They now have hard ties into Auto related things.

I dropped AVG when it became bloated (some folk may need their hand held all the time, but not me).
Don't get me started on NAV

The problem is many companies start out good, then get greedy for market share

[kovidgoyal]

It does not have anything to do with plugins. Of course I cannot be sure of that, but given that calibre-parallel.exe is being flagged, ti is almost certainly because calibre-parallel.exe is used to download metadata and news sources which means it often contacts servers online. I'm guessing that using it ins some ways, but not others, triggers whatever heuristics AVG uses to detect trojans.

And I'm sorry but I dont see anything I can do to fix that in calibre. Since AVG does not tell you why it thinks calibre-parallel.exe is a threat, and moreover whether it thinks it is a threat or not varies from time to time, release to release, AVG version to AVG version, trying to fix that in calibre is a mugs game.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by haertig

Avast is not saying that Calibre is dangerous. Only that it could be dangerous. Which is 100% correct.

That would be true... if they gave me the warning before blocking it, and not after (in my world, that is not a warning), and it would be able to learn from a release to other.

[NSILMike]

Originally Posted by theducks

Uhh
Those also get PAID for advertising. Ya think they would make a bad review?

[snipped]

Even if the sources I mentioned are getting paid by Avast (or AVG) their reviews are independent, which is easily researched. They provide plenty of poor reviews for other advertisers which you can easily research. Or find your own source of reviews if you prefer. In any case, without doing some research on antivirus (or similar critical applications) you'd be putting yourself at great risk.