[R] R is a virus, spyware or malware (gasp!)

[Daniel Nordlund]

I looked at the home website and found a contact form which someone could use to inform the company of the error of their ways.

http://www.prevx.com/contactus.asp

I will leave it to those who may be better equipped to deal with any replies from the company to contact them.

Dan

Daniel Nordlund
Bothell, WA USA

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf
> Of Tony Plate
> Sent: Monday, May 19, 2008 2:30 PM
> To: Peter Dalgaard
> Cc: R help forum; Philippe Grosjean
> Subject: Re: [R] R is a virus, spyware or malware (gasp!)
> 
> And the installed Rgui.exe in 2.6.2 is 10240 bytes, which is
> their "most common file size."
> 
> They also say (fill in your own comments...):
> 
>  > RGUI.EXE has been seen to perform the following behavior(s):
>  >
>  >     * Can communicate with other computer systems using
> HTTP protocols
>  >     * This Process Creates Other Processes On Disk
>  >     * This Process Deletes Other Processes From Disk
>  >     * Executes a Process
>  >     * The Process is packed and/or encrypted using a
> software packing process
>  >     * Accesses the MS Outlook Address Book
> 
> and
> 
>  > What you should do about RGUI.EXE:
>  >
>  > Check Your PC Now
>  > The most common objects with the name of RGUI.EXE have
> yet to be classified as safe by our research department.
> 
> So, I suspect that they don't actually classify it as a
> virus, they just haven't classified it as safe...  (I
> couldn't see any email contact address on their web page.)
> 
> -- Tony Plate
> 
> 
> Peter Dalgaard wrote:
> > Ioannis Dimakos wrote:
> >> Of course it's a virus.  Once you catch the virus, you feel this rush,
> >> this fever to abandon all other statistical packages.
> >>
> >> On a more serious note, though, the size of the RGUI.exe file as reported
> >> in the webpage is not even near close to the actual size of the R
> >> distribution exe pack.
> >>
> > Hmm, the installed Rgui.exe in 2.7.0rc (which is all I have, under Wine
> > on a Fedora machine) appears to be 27648 bytes, which is one of the
> > cited numbers.
> >
> > Presumably something needs to be done...
> >
> >
> >> I
> >>
> >> ====
> >> On Sun, May 18, 2008 17:30, Philippe Grosjean wrote:
> >>
> >>> After a search session in Google, I found this page:
> >>> http://www.prevx.com/filenames/X1993788672854780728-0/RGUI.EXE.html
> >>> which classifies Rgui.exe (clearly stated as "R for Windows GUI
> >>> front-end") in a database of virus, spyware and malware!
> >>>
> >>> No comments!
> >>>
> >>> Philippe Grosjean
> >>>
> >>> ______________________________________________
> >>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> >>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> >>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> >>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> >>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.