Delphi programs blocked by antivirus programs [closed]

Answer 1

Creating a huge amount of files sounds like something that isn't necessarily A Good Thing, but you probably have your reasons :)

When you get the error code in Delphi, does KAV pop up any heuristic warnings, or is it completely silent? It wouldn't be weird to get a heuristic "omg, that app is doing something bad!" from creating a ton of new file, but if KAV is silent I'd say it's a bug.

Can you post a delphi executable with the tiniest amount of code that reproduces the bug? And a version that does the same step but only creates one file, it might be interesting to trace with SysInternals' ProcMon.

Answer 2

Kaspersky = pirate company? Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe just yet another company with a bad product and nonexistent support. Their "support" consists in a FAQ database and an automatic email answering program. Phones are hooked to answering machines also. Their automated answer keep explaining me how to add my program in KIS "exception" database. I keep replying to those stupid emails that I cannot personally go to all my customers at home and put my program in the "exception" database and that it will be better if they will fix the bug.

When I finally got a non-automatic answer (the only one), the support guy fella is as rude as possible.

Possible solutions for Delphi programmers:
* Don't check if the user has write permission to a file (in order not to trigger Kaspersky bug)
* Check if the user has write permission. If the bug appears inform the user that Kaspersky creates problem and it should be temporary disable (while the program is running). Use a TRY EXCEPT block to do this.

Advice (based on my past experience):
Don't always blame your code if you ever received strange bug reports from your users when your program was trying to write to disk. Check also external factors (like existence of Kaspersky antivirus).

UPDATE:
I just applied for a refund. I will go for a chargeback if they won't refund the money (I strongly feel they won't).

Conclusion
When I posted this on StackOverflow I didn't realized the magnitude of the problem and I didn't realized it will deviate so much from initial course. Still I think it is well within the purpose of StackOverflow. We have all learned that sometimes the problems in out programs may not be caused by our faulty code and neither we can control the source of these problems (21 persons voted this question up - which means a lot of other people encountered issues with KIS). We can just hope that poor designed programs that interacts with user's system at a very low level (such as KIS antivirus program) will be soon fixed so our sales won't suffer (much).

It is just frustrating when your program is labeled "buggy" and you can't do much about it!

Answer 3

You need to instruct your users, i.e. Kaspersky's customers, that Kaspersky is interfering with the operation of your software, and that THEY should report it. Express your frustration that you, as a developer, don't have access to a real human being. This is the only way that the anti-malware companies will ever react - bad PR with their paying customers.

Answer 4

Not an answer to solve your problem, but you should inform Kaspersky, probably they don't know there is a virus signature associated with a Delphi library.

And if your program isn't too complex, you might want to try Lazarus/FPC. It's not as good as Delphi, but I've been using it for several years now, and have got good results in Windows/MacOS/Linux.

Answer 5

First, do you really need to test for write permissions by creating a file? Can't you just check the permission directly? I feel that creating a file for that purpose only is a lame way of doing it in any case.

Second, like noted above, it's likely that after you create and then delete a file, there is some intervention by Kaspersky's security mechanisms. Probably a driver tries to check the contents of the file you deleted, and keeps it alive for a while. Like this:

1. You create the file and open it, incrementing the refcount.
2. Kaspersky driver notices that and opens the file too. Even if you set share mode deny, as a driver it probably has the power to open it anyway (if Kaspersky could not circumvent sharing denials, any virus could have used the same trick to hide its data!).
3. You close the file and delete it. When you delete the file, the system just marks it "FILE_FLAG_DELETE_ON_CLOSE", but the file is still there until all the handles to it are closed.
4. Kaspersky continues to scan file, still haven't released the handle.
5. Therefore the file is still there.
6. You try to create a new file and the call fails because the old file is still not deleted.

The reason for all this mess is, of course, partly Kaspersky's checking mechanics, but they did nothing especially wrong here. Kaspersky needs to scan the file anyway, hardly anything can be done about that - it's antivirus, for crying out loud. On the other hand, checking permissions by creating and then deleting a file is (probably) very, very wrong. So I guess, you're the one at fault here.

Answer 6

i had similar problems with kaspersky 2011 when i was trying to add my prog to windows startup using d2010's new TFile.Copy() as well as raw api function:

 CopyFile(PChar('C:\chellenger.exe'), PChar('C:\Documents and Settings\Omair\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\chellenger.exe'), False);

my solution was to put my delphi app in vb.net app as a resource, the vb.net app extracted it and put it to startup without false positives . Mixing two languages for your problem might solve your problem too(1 possible solution but a very ugly and nonprofessional solution i admit)