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Chrome declares Sophos Anti-Virus as incompatible application

Is anyone else having Chrome report "Sophos Anti-Virus" as an incompatible application after a crash and do Sophos have any plans to address the issue?

A good write-up of the issue can be found here:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-chrome-showing-alerts-about-incompatible-applications/

 

Thanks,

Michael



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Parents
  • Hi Michael Gilmour,

    According to the article that you posted:

    "When it comes to security software, I would think more people would prefer to have a fully functional antivirus software on their computer with occasional browser crashes, rather than no protection at all. Therefore, if Chrome is displaying your antivirus software as an incompatible application, I suggest you ignore the warning for now."

    I'd like to gather additional information so that we can better assist you:

    What's the exact Sophos version installed (and are there any other Sophos products in place?)
    What's the Chrome version?
    What's your OS? 
    You mentioned a crash, what crashed? Chrome? Sophos? Do you have any dmp files or crash files that we can review?
    Are there any addons involved?
    Are all of your machines presenting this behavior?

    Regards,

    Barb@Sophos
    Community Support Engineer | Sophos Technical Support
    Knowledge Base  |  @SophosSupport  | Sign up for SMS Alerts
    If a post solves your question use the 'This helped me' link.

     

Reply
  • Hi Michael Gilmour,

    According to the article that you posted:

    "When it comes to security software, I would think more people would prefer to have a fully functional antivirus software on their computer with occasional browser crashes, rather than no protection at all. Therefore, if Chrome is displaying your antivirus software as an incompatible application, I suggest you ignore the warning for now."

    I'd like to gather additional information so that we can better assist you:

    What's the exact Sophos version installed (and are there any other Sophos products in place?)
    What's the Chrome version?
    What's your OS? 
    You mentioned a crash, what crashed? Chrome? Sophos? Do you have any dmp files or crash files that we can review?
    Are there any addons involved?
    Are all of your machines presenting this behavior?

    Regards,

    Barb@Sophos
    Community Support Engineer | Sophos Technical Support
    Knowledge Base  |  @SophosSupport  | Sign up for SMS Alerts
    If a post solves your question use the 'This helped me' link.

     

Children
  • Thanks Barb & Jak,

     

    we've only had one report of this so far, by a colleague, so it may be going unreported elsewhere. I notice the Chrome dev mentioned in the original linked article suggests "this feature is currently considered experimental so not all users will see these warnings" which might explain why I'm unable to replicate it.

     

    The particular incident was seen after Chrome crashed and was relaunched in the following environment:

    Windows 10 x64 1709

    Chrome x64 v68.0.3440.106

    Sophos SEC 10.8

    Web protection enabled

    Sophos EXP (HMPA) enabled

     

    The original article makes it clear why the behaviour is being seen and suggests it may not even be Sophos that had caused the crash in the first place but my concern is that Sophos is taking the rap and is being suggested to be uninstalled (luckily our users don't have the rights to do that).

     

    My next concern is the statement that the Chrome dev makes is that rather a warning, the actual behaviour will be blocked in a future version of Chrome. When this happens will we have all the same AV functionality in Chrome that we do now or will some protections be lost?

     

    Note, the note at the bottom of the following article suggests that the blocking (rather than warning) behaviour may have already started (with Chrome 69) : blog.chromium.org/.../reducing-chrome-crashes-caused-by-third.html

    "Updated 2018-06-21: Third-party software will be blocked from injecting code into Chrome on Windows starting in Chrome 69."

     

    As long as Sophos have things in hand with Chrome that's fine, I just wanted to check that they do as information on the issue/behaviour seems a bit sparse. If you would like me to raise a support call I will but am currently unable to replicate.

     

    Thanks again,

    Michael