Avast is flagging files in this program as malware and locking them

[Jacq]

Hi there. Anyone know why avast is flagging parts of this install as malware?
It doesn't like zf_cef.dll and doesn't want me to access it as it's been flagged as supected Win32:BogEnt

[Zake]

Alright, I don't know the answer, so I went googling.

Since I didn't recognise Avast (the name) I googled 'Avast false positives'. At least one user said:

Avast is known for its false-positive alarms for years and many many others for their intrusive, annoying ads and warning messages.

I'm too lazy to look into it tho, so idk how common this issue is. Google did offer some fun 'questions', one of which was: 'Can Avast be trusted?'

It said:

Avast is a good antivirus and provides a decent level of security protection. The free version comes with lots of features, although it doesn't protect against ransomware. If you want premium protection, you'll have to upgrade to one of the paid-for options.

Another question was: 'Is Avast good in 2020?'

Answer was:

In 2020, Avast was caught in a scandal after the company sold privacy-sensitive data on millions of its users to tech and advertising companies such as Google. Although its antivirus protection is excellent, we currently do not recommend using Avast. Have a look at Bitdefender or Norton instead.

My guess it is a false positive, but googling false positive anything would get results (I imagine). You could look through the threads and see what sort of things are saying gave them alleged false positives.



I feel that if Tabletop Simulator was malware, someone would've noticed by now and it wouldn't be on Steam. This isn't a super niche game, it is relatively popular. It should at least have a bunch of negative reviews complaining about it being malware if it was.


As for what you can do, there are a few options.

Try reinstalling? Idk how false positives work, but I guess if it doesn't flag it again you're all good.

Alternatively, look into how Avast identifies malware and see if it is too harsh (or whatever). Can also wait for someone more knowledgeable than me to show up, or reach out to Avast support (if they have one).

Another option is to just ignore Avast, but generally ignoring your anti-virus isn't the best idea. You could wait to see what others have to say, or try looking into Tabletop Simulator yourself (to figure out if it is to be trusted). Heck, you made this thread, which is sort of doing this.

The final option is to just get a refund and not play Tabletop Simulator. I imagine you can do this if you're not satisfied with the responses you get here.

[Jacq]

There's a good chance it's a false positive. I just don't love ignoring my antivirus out of hand was wondering if anyone else had the file flagged and if it turned out to be anything to be worried about. It quarantined the file and tabletop simulator still seems to run without it so far at least. I found a way to submit it to avast to check if it's a real threat so have done that.

[SaltyO]

AV overreacts quite a lot. It's a false positive. Avast is not the greatest...
When I used Windows my AV of choice was Kaspersky and MalwareBytes.
Defender also overreacts, but it doesn't bother to tell you. These forums are filled with people asking why some feature of TTS stopped working and the solution was simply to tell Defender to re-permit TTS to do things on their systems.

[Jacq]

I've used Kaspersky and MalwareBytes as well. They all have their pros and cons. Avast does tend to overreact, but I'd kind of prefer that to it missing stuff. It's annoying when it flags stuff that shouldn't be, but it's not hard to put back when I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. (I also have a second opinion scanner and it seems rare that anything slips past Avast for me at least that's been picked up. But I have had it pick up false positives occasionally before as well). Anyway, good to know. I figured if there was something iffy in the program others would have already flagged it but just wanting to be careful as getting some types of malware out of computers isn't always the best fun in the world. Thanks.