Simmons Consulting, the Website of Toby Simmons

Watch out: MS Antispyware flags Symantec AV as spyware!

10
Feb

The latest definitions for Microsoft AntiSpyware seem to flag Symantec AntiVirus as the PWS.Bancos.A Password Stealer! This is quite disturbing, since we run both on most of our PCs. We have seen this on only one machine so far, but it is probably the only one that has done a complete scan since 4 a.m. Yikes.

Edit (2006-02-13) : Looks like it took them about 24 hours to fix the problem. The updated definitions (Spyware Definition Version: 5807) were released 2/10/2006 @ 11:02:39 PM. Make sure you are updated!

Comments (8) »

  1. Boguslaw says:

    I have the same problems – 10.Feb with Symantec Antivirus 9, today with version 10. I have deinstalled MS AntiSpyware Beta1.

  2. vincent says:

    just update your MS Antispyware and issue will be resolved. This was a problem on MS’s side. you don’t have a spyware/trojan like it says. just update your Antispyware and you will see it is fine. If you removed like the app suggests then you break Norton. no good! this is kind of scary since Microsoft just came out with their own Antivirus software *wink*

  3. Dan says:

    This is a big mistake by Microsoft. Their AntiSpyware program just destroyed my Symantec Antivirus software. Now I can’t uninstall it or reinstall it at all. I’m sure I’ll get this figured out, but Microsoft just cost me a couple hours of my life. I’m Angry!!!

  4. Andy says:

    Updating to the latest MS Antispyware updates today (February 13) still show PWS.Bancos.A while Symantec Antivirus 10 is installed.

  5. Toby Simmons says:

    Did you try running a new scan? What does Microsoft AntiSpyware show as the current definitions (from the Help – About menu)?

  6. Eric says:

    I can confirm all this. Scanning my PC with Microsoft AntiSpyware version 5805 produced various numbers of “infected” registry keys, all of which belonged to Symantec Antivirus 9, Corporate Edition. Doing “remove” destroyed a file, savrt32.dll, necessary for the operation of Symantec Antivirus 9. Scans using Symantec Antivirus and Ad-Aware detected nothing. And, when I updated Microsoft AntiSpyware to version 5807, magically, PWS.Bancos.A was no longer detected as a threat! It appears someone should be fired at Microsoft.

  7. Rebecca says:

    Someone at Microsoft should be fired for this one. I too had these same issues. My Norton AntiVirus 7.4 Corporate Edition was basically gone after deleting the “so called” infected registries that the AntiSpyware detected. Spent the better part of the day trying to figure out why I could not un-install SAV and re-install. Called a computer repair shop that told me I had a trojan horse. Glad I did further research and saved myself a few hundred bucks! By simply doing a system restore to an earlier date, all my problems were gone and a huge weight was lifted.

  8. tito says:

    i installed the symatec anti spyware and it blocked all yahoo and msn messenger i dunno wut to do and the problem is that i can’t uninstall it. again i dunno wut to do.any help pleaseeeeeeeeee.im begging here

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>