Question

I am running a very simple C++ program:

#include <list>
#include <vector>

int main(int argc, char **args) {

}

I go to the command prompt and compile and run:

g++ whatever.cpp
a.exe

Normally this works just fine. It compiles fine, but when I run it it says Access Denied and AVG pops up telling me that a threat has been detected Trojan Horse Generic 17.CKZT. I tried compiling again using the Microsoft Compiler (cl.exe) and it runs fines. So I went back, and added:

#include <iostream>

compiled using g++ and ran. This time it worked fine.

So can anyone tell me why AVG would report an empty main method as a trojan horse but if the iostream header is included it doesn’t?

UPDATE:

I added a return statement to the main method and now I find that I only get the error if I return 0. Any other return value and it seems to work fine.

What’s going on here?

Answer 1

You’re not the first person to encounter false positives by antivirus software.

What probably happened is that the antivirus heuristics tripped up on the standard runtime libraries present in your programs, since malware uses them as well. Of course, legitimate software uses them too! The fact that it didn’t trip up on iostream probably means that iostream isn’t very popular among malware writers.