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Asked: 2026-06-04T22:37:29+00:00

I have recently created a small VB application for a friend of mine, I

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I have recently created a small VB application for a friend of mine, I am using the publish feature included within Visual studio (it’s the easiest way of updating it and having the updated version downloaded automatically) but when I download it, it downloads “setup.exe”

Chrome and AV’s seem to think this is a virus, why is this? I have made it a full trust application and signed it with a certificate and a key, but it still think’s it’s a virus, any ideas?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Answer 1 Copied and pasted from http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/r-9JQIboUmc

    I was able to get around it without a code signing certificate, just by using SSL (which uses a less expensive certificate, and I already had one to secure access to my website), but as your experience shows it seems SSL isn’t the only way…

    Based on my experience and what I’ve read of others here, my theory of how Chrome validates downloads is that it goes through a checklist like this:

    1. Is the host site known and trusted? (i.e. large established sites are OK)
    2. Can the identity of the host site be verified? (i.e. via SSL certificate)
    3. Can the the identity of the file’s publisher be verified? (i.e. via code signing certificate)
    4. Is the file known and trusted? (I had a file up for a while that was unsigned and accessed without SSL – Chrome was fine with it until I changed the binary after the security update… I’m assuming it takes some time to reach this status.)

    If one of these criteria passes, the download is not flagged as malware, and if they all fail, it is.

    Answer 2: Copied from http://blog.chromium.org/2012/01/all-about-safe-browsing.html

    Malicious downloads are especially tricky to detect since they’re often posted on rapidly changing URLs and are even “re-packed” to fool anti-virus programs. Chrome helps counter this behavior by checking executable downloads against a list of known good files and publishers. If a file isn’t from a known source, Chrome sends the URL and IP of the host and other meta data, such as the file’s hash and binary size, to Google. The file is automatically classified using machine learning analysis and the reputation and trustworthiness of files previously seen from the same publisher and website. Google then sends the results back to Chrome, which warns you if you’re at risk.

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