[R] False Virus detection with colorspace package?

[Jeff Newmiller]

This kind of thing is all too common. You can download the source, review the code, and build the package yourself, and compare the supplied binary with your home-built one. Chances are AVG will complain about that one too, and you can confirm the false positive. Anti virus software is not too friendly with non-mainstream software.
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Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

John C Frain <frainj at gmail.com> wrote:

>After updating to version 2.14 and copying packages from my Version
>2.13.2 library  I ran
>
>update.packages(checkBuilt=TRUE,ask=FALSE) to update these packages.
>This failed because AVG reported a virus in the "temporary" copy of
>colorspace.dll created during the install and the update then failed
>because it was unable to open this temporary file.  To continue I
>deleted the colorspace packages and its reverse dependences and the
>reverse dependencies of the reverse dependencies.  After deleting
>these packages the update process then finished.
>
>I would presume that the virus is probably a false detection.  However
>when I virus check the version 2.13.2 library AVG does not find a
>virus.  As far as I can determine the only difference between the two
>packages is that they are built with different versions of R.  I would
>intend to reinstall these packages when the problem has been solved.
>I am sending a report to AVG. For the moment I can fall back to the
>earlier version if necessary.
>
>Has any one else detected a similar problem.
>
>An extract of the diagnosis sent to AVG is below.
>
>Best regards
>
>John
>
>AVG Free Version 2012.0.1869 Virus database 2092/4602 detects a virus
>in the colorspace package in the R statistical system.  The zip file
>containing the offending file can be downloaded from
>
>http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/r-release/colorspace_1.1-0.zip
>or from any of the CRAN mirrors.
>
>The message produced by AVG is
>
>*****************************************************
>
>File name:   c:\.....\colourspace\libs\i386\colorspace.dll
>
>Threat name: Virus found Win32/Heur
>
>Detected on open
>
>*****************************************************
>
>Is this a false positive?
>
>-- 
>John C Frain
>Economics Department
>Trinity College Dublin
>Dublin 2
>Ireland
>www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/frainj/home.html
>mailto:frainj at tcd.ie
>mailto:frainj at gmail.com
>
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