AVG, the popular anti-virus package, has falsely identified Adobe Flash as potentially malicious. The snafu comes just days after AVG slapped a bogus Trojan warning on a core Windows component.
Users on AVG forums complained on Friday that Adobe Flash was detected by AVG's scanner as malicious, following a recent update. The gaffe follows an even more glaring screw-up when user32.dll, a core Windows component, was identified as a banking Trojan following a signature update issued on Sunday. Users who followed AVG's advise and deleted the "harmful file" were left with systems that either failed to boot or went into a continuous reboot cycle. Users of both AVG 7.5 and 8 (free and full-feature editions) were affected.
Less than a month ago AVG identified CheckPoint's Zone Alarm as a Trojan.
False alarms by anti-virus scanners are a well-known Achilles heel. Everybody who's anybody has problems with false alarms from time to time but to have three such problems in less than a month is difficult to defend.
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