Avast anti-virus is deleting Bitcoin Classic app

pcatt

New Member
Oct 4, 2016
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Just a heads up to developers and Bitcoin Classic fans. It seems that Avast anti-virus is treating Bitcoin classic like malware or a virus and deleting the Bitcoin-qt app for Bitcoin Classic.

The app kept disappearing from its folder, even after installing. Then I noticed the 'Avast' tag on the app when I launched it.

I reinstalled from the installer and then told Avast to ignore the folder, and now it no longer deletes it.

I don't know who is responsible for that, I just wanted to let you guys know so you can investigate the matter.
 
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freetrader

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Dec 16, 2015
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Thanks for reporting this.

Did you download the app via the Classic site (https://bitcoinclassic.com/) ? If not, can you report the URL used?

I've notified the Classic slack (where Classic developers hang about).

I'll ask them if the best way would be to raise an issue on their Github repo (i.e. bugtracker)
[doublepost=1475600774][/doublepost]psa: edited my post
 
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freetrader

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Dec 16, 2015
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feedback from Classic slack is:

nothing from the latest (1.1.1) release
nothing from the 1.2beta either
so either he's using a very old version or he has got an actual virus
I suggest checking the SHA256SUMS.asc file
Please check the SHA256SUMS.asc file to see if it contains a match for the SHA256 checksum of your installer/ZIP file that you used, and please advise the exact file you downloaded...
 

pcatt

New Member
Oct 4, 2016
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Ah. I just found out the SHA-256 Hash of the file, and matches one of the signatures in the SHA256SUMS.asc file... so I'm pretty sure it's legit.
[doublepost=1475602475][/doublepost]It was this file: bitcoin-1.2b-win64-setup.exe
 

freetrader

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Dec 16, 2015
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So yes, the SHA1 you gave matches the SHA1 for bitcoin-1.2b-win64-setup.exe which I downloaded from the Classic site at https://github.com/bitcoinclassic/bitcoinclassic/releases/download/v1.2.0.b1/bitcoin-1.2b-win64-setup.exe .

It's curious that Avast should detect something from that install as malicious and remove it. However, it has been known to happen that virus checkers take action against blockchain data which may contain virus signatures [1]. If this is what's triggering Avast, you might need to set Avast to exclude the bitcoin blockchain datadir (I'm not sure if Avast would quarantine the binaries if it detected them writing out unobfuscated blockchain data with virus signatures - it's possible).

I suggest you raise this issue on the Classic issue tracker for further investigation / advice:

https://github.com/bitcoinclassic/bitcoinclassic/issues

Reference:
[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1416907.0
 
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