You didn't mention the specific warning text that you see, but since
this comes up once in a while (although not too frequently) I think I
know what you are seeing. Yes, it is a false positive.

Virus scanning software isn't always able to find an *exact* match for
viruses. To try to find "zero day" viruses (in other words, to detect
viruses before they are "known" viruses) antivirus programs sometimes
use heuristics to guess about "virus-like" behavior. Avast is one of
these antivirus programs that tries to make a guess.

One "virus-like" behavior is a program that tries to install new code
onto your bootloader, and run the system on its own. In other words,
exactly like the SYS command will do, or how the FORMAT program can
wipe a partition with a new filesystem. Or like what the FreeDOS
kernel will do. Those are the kinds of "virus-like" programs that
Avast thinks it finds in the FreeDOS LiveCD.

This is a false positive. Avast hasn't really found a virus.



On Sun, Aug 18, 2024 at 3:20 PM Petr Ullmann via Freedos-user
<freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>
> Hi guys,
>
> maybe it is false alert but when I try to download FreeDOS live CD
> (https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/official/FD13-LiveCD.zip)
> I get warning from Avast that the website is infected by some virus.
>
> Can somebody else same error?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Petr
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Freedos-user mailing list
> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user


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