Avast considered browsers and Office malware due to faulty signatures

Avast was dealing with a bug in its software that caused browsers, among other things, to be seen as malware. As a result, users were unable to launch their browser. Hardware drivers and Office were also incorrectly labeled as malware.

Users of the anti-malware software reported the issues on the Avast forum. After a recent software update with version number 150506-3, the problems are said to have arisen in the virus signature database. For example, several users reported receiving false positives for legitimate software. Chrome and Office applications, among others, are referred to as malware. In addition, it concerns drivers for hardware components from, for example, ATI and Nvidia.

Avast has now released a patch that should fix the problem. The false positives mainly occur among users of the business version of the anti-malware software: they use VPS5, a virus database in which signatures of legitimate software were mistakenly marked as malware. The patch has version number 150506-5.

Recently, Panda Security users faced a similar problem. The software labeled some necessary files as malware, which prevented some users from booting their computers. The company therefore released live CDs.