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ClassLink Operations April 10, 2015 20:13

Extension flagged by AV software

Our extension (id 57078), even though we use a code-signing certificate as suggested, is being flagged by multiple AV software providers.

It was typically the IE version being flagged, but now we're seeing the Chrome extension being flagged by System Center 2012.

Anything we can do about this? We had been putting in whitelist requests to individual AV companies but many of them require us to be re-added after any update to our extension.
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  • EMPLOYEE
    Shlomo (Official Rep) April 12, 2015 08:54
    Hello ClassLink,

    Thank you for reporting the false-positive AV issue.

    In general, warnings such as these ARE NOT viruses or worms, they are merely a message that the AV solution generates to say "we consider this software suspicious or suspect" and it MAY (MAY being the operative word) contain viruses. Now, there are many possible reasons why installers MAY be considered suspicious, usually along the lines of the software doesn't have a lot of downloads and is therefore untrusted, or other such reasons. For this reason, AV solution provide a mechanism to add an exception to ignore such incidents, so that installers can run without further warning. The other option is to simply disable the AV solution during the install and when it detects it later, allow the instance and AV solution will automatically create an exception.

    In conjunction with the above, we continually work to reduce such incidents and our experience shows that the best way to handle such false-positive detections is to approach the AV provider explaining the purpose of your extension and its behavior so that they can clear it for you.

    Our product team continually work to resolve such false-positive issues and there are regular updates to the installer to reflect their fixes.
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  • ClassLink Operations April 12, 2015 12:52
    Hi Shlomo,
    Thank you for the response.

    Unfortunately, we deploy our extension in school environments that are reluctant, from the IT side, to whitelist anything, and are prone to panic, from the instructional side. When several hundred teachers inundate an IT department with the hysteria caused by a false positive message, the IT department is understandably frustrated. Whitelisting is a temporary bandaid on their end, as AV software updates and extension updates introduce the return of the warning.

    As mentioned in my original message, requesting whitelisting by the AV provider directly has been tedious and fruitless, as many do not respond, or require frequent requests, with the payoff often being a temporary whitelisting.
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    • Shlomo (Official Rep) April 12, 2015 14:17
      Thanks for the additional information and I empathize with your predicament; hence, I have passed it on to the product team.

      Overall, it's a relatively small number of incidents in relation the the number of extensions/installations of extensions written on the platform. Nevertheless, we are actively looking into the matter and are speaking to AV providers to try and resolves these incidents but unfortunately it's a long drawn-out process.
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  • EMPLOYEE
    Shlomo (Official Rep) April 16, 2015 06:48
    Hello ClassLink,

    Thank you for your patience and understanding. The dev team released a fix to the framework that should resolve the false-positive you mentioned. I have rebuilt your installation files and packages. Please export a fresh copy of the extension for the Chrome Store and update the Store.
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