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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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  • Hello Michael,

    can't say whether it was a FP or not, at present the images mentioned in your previous post can be accessed.

    Mal/Behav-230 is a generic detection. What makes you think this is a false positive? If the scanner has successfully dealt with it then there'll be nothing SVRT could detect as it uses the same detection data. If it has been cleaned up (removed) by the scanner you'lll find a corresponding message in the AV log. With appropriate cleanup settings it is possible to obtain a sample and submit it to Labs (details can be found following the link on the analysis' Summary page).

    Christian

    :54645
Reply
  • Hello Michael,

    can't say whether it was a FP or not, at present the images mentioned in your previous post can be accessed.

    Mal/Behav-230 is a generic detection. What makes you think this is a false positive? If the scanner has successfully dealt with it then there'll be nothing SVRT could detect as it uses the same detection data. If it has been cleaned up (removed) by the scanner you'lll find a corresponding message in the AV log. With appropriate cleanup settings it is possible to obtain a sample and submit it to Labs (details can be found following the link on the analysis' Summary page).

    Christian

    :54645
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