Windows Defender Says Alexa is a Trojan
Apparently, the latest version of Windows Defender thinks that Alexa is a trojan, talk about false positives, unless, that is, Alexa has REALLY changed what they do. My guess is that it is detecting it as another piece of malware, as it shows in the screen shots, Win32/VB.BZ. I’m sure an apology is sure to come from Microsoft, and that they do not have something against Alexa.
This morning I discovered several PCs running Windows Defender and the Alexa Toolbar were receiving messages that the Alexa Toolbar was classified as a trojan. The name classification within Windows Defender was Win32/VB.BZ.
I then tested installing the Alexa toolbar onto a brand-spanking new Windows Vista PC. As the file was downloading, Windows Defender popped up with a warning and said the risk/Alert Level was “Highâ€.
I installed the file anyway and it once again classified the Alexa Toolbar as Win32/VB.BZ, a “trojan clickerâ€, according to the results I see via a Google search on Win32/VB.BZ.
The files it found were C:\WINDOWS\system32\alxres.dll and C:\WINDOWS\AlxTB1.dll - legitimate Alexa files. Source: Windows Defender calls Alexa Toolbar Trojan via Faill.com
Alexa does indeed send some of your info back to their servers, they track visits to websites all over and need to communicate and to somehow get that info back to their main servers. But, this just has to be some kind of false positive, probably nothing really news worthy here.
Tags:alexa_toolbar, apparently, dll, false_positives, files_source, google, guess, Internet, malware, news_worthy, risk_alert, Software, source_windows, trojan_clicker, win32, Windows, windows vista, windows xp
