AVG Detects ZoneAlarm as Trojan
A faulty definition update caused AVG anti-virus to block and quarantine the ZoneAlarm firewall

People that use the AVG anti-virus, along with the ZoneAlarm firewall, had an unpleasant surprise when AVG suddenly started to block and quarantine Check Point's popular firewall solution. The false positive was caused by a bogus malware definition file update and AVG eventually addressed the issue.

This problem affected all versions of ZoneAlarm and AVG, both free and commercial; thus, the users assaulted the ZoneAlarm support forum with reports that AVG started to detect ZoneAlarm as a Trojan by the name of Agent_r.CX. Several ZoneAlarm components were being blocked and quarantined and attempts at reinstalling the firewall software failed. At the same time, similar reports popped up on the AVG forums.

“AVG updated on reboot around 8:30 p.m., 10/13/2008. Then AVG Resident Shield blocked Zone Alarm Pro vsmon.exe from loading after identifying five (5) ZA files in Windows/System32/ZoneLabs/lib as infected with Trojan Horse Agent_r.CX: ConfigWizard.zip.dll, licenseui.zip.dll, zlsvc.zip.dll, zpy.zip.dll, zui.zip.dll. Files have been there for 3 months,” a user described the technical details.

According to Laura Yecies, General Manager at Check Point, the company that develops ZoneAlarm, AVG was immediately notified and issued a definitions fix in a matter of hours. During the few hours of uncertainty, the users devised a workaround that consisted in adding the ZoneAlarm folder to the exceptions list of the anti-virus.

For more details: Softpedia