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Re: False positive mal/HTMLgen-a

As the top Google hit for "Mal/HTMLGen-A" I thought I'd chime in here.  Sophos users are reporting that they're getting this Mal/HTMLGen-A error for my site:

http://rogerborg.dnsd.me

Which I use solely as a repository for handy images that I link to in other web forums.  Thusly for "rogerborg.dnsd.me/hipster-hulk.jpg", which sums up my feelings about now.

hipster-hulk.jpg

There's also a trivial (single <img>) index.html page, and a robots.txt that denies all.

This is all that the Sophos threat library has to say about this issue:

"Mal/HTMLGen-A is the threat name associated with web pages that have been classified as malicious by SophosLabs.

Web pages blocked by Sophos products as Mal/HTMLGen-A are likely to be used in an infection chain used to infect users with malware"

So it doesn't imply or even suggest any actual infection, it just means that Sophos doesn't much like the look of this site.  Is it because the domain is hosted on a dynamic IP?  The index.html is too simple?  There's a deny robots.txt?  I don't know, and I and the end usesr have no way of knowing.  Telling them that it's infected is deceitful, unhelpful, and alarming.

Poor show, chaps.  Poor show.

:36863


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  • Funny story:

    Remember good old 'File Manager' (winfile.exe) from Windows 3.1, 95 and NT4 days?

    Up until a few years ago, upon a brand new install of Windows XP, with the 32 bit File Manager installed into the Windows directory, and then an install of the-then current version of Sophos, it would immediately detect and declare and quarantine File Manager as being a Mal/Gen-A virus. I used to laugh that Sophos detected a Microsoft written product as being viral. ...and then I just had to stop all Sophos's services. Was a right royal pain.

    But after sending report upon report and request upon request to Sophos, they finally fixed their signature code for File Manager.

    :49396
Reply
  • Funny story:

    Remember good old 'File Manager' (winfile.exe) from Windows 3.1, 95 and NT4 days?

    Up until a few years ago, upon a brand new install of Windows XP, with the 32 bit File Manager installed into the Windows directory, and then an install of the-then current version of Sophos, it would immediately detect and declare and quarantine File Manager as being a Mal/Gen-A virus. I used to laugh that Sophos detected a Microsoft written product as being viral. ...and then I just had to stop all Sophos's services. Was a right royal pain.

    But after sending report upon report and request upon request to Sophos, they finally fixed their signature code for File Manager.

    :49396
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