False Positives by some random antivirus vendor

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Occasionally we test our software products for viruses and other malware in sites such as Virus Total. Sites like these offer free online malware scan for URL or file with very wide range of anti-malware products. So far so good, but problem is, that almost every time, there is some random antivirus vendor who detects our software as some generic virus.

These False positives never come from Big players such as Symantec, McAfee or AVG. Why? Because they have very large customer base, and every time there is a False positive, there are many upset customers, and upset customers are bad business.

Some antivirus companies like IKARUS GmbH have an URL or email address, where you can send in what you believe is False positive. They usually react quick, and your False positive is out of their database in the next update.

And there are antivirus vendors like Trend Micro who employs more than 4000 people, and they do not accept False positive samples from people or organizations that have not bought their antivirus products. You can see this if you do a Google search on Trend Micro False Positive.

What can you do if your antivirus software are detecting our or any other software as a virus, and they do not provide any means where False positive sample can be submitted? Contact your antivirus vendor, or switch to another vendor. Why are you using antivirus product, that can not detect what is malware and what is not?

Another poor example was Clam AntiVirus, that is now removed from Virus Total antivirus list. They had a problem, that too many False Positive requests made the support queue so long, so they couldn’t keep up with the removal request processing. They were processing requests that was more than 1/2 year old. Nightly builds, I am talking to you! Check out ClamAV virus and not-a-virus submission form. The line that says it all:

Because of a high number of submitters, please do not submit more than two files per day.

Also, the basic test any anti-malware can do, is to test for Digital Signature. All of our software is digitally signed with a valid Digital Signature, and malware with valid Digital Signature is super-very rare thing.

Bonus reading:

Version 1.2.2 of Automation Workshop released

A new version of Automation Workshop released. Version 1.2.2 fixes one rare and in the same time serious bug, where server machine in domain can run out of resources because Automation Workshop is spawning too many Service Agents. This can be observed using Windows Task Manager — multiple AutomationWorkshopAgent.exe programs are running under the same Session and the same user account.

As always updating is straightforward — run Setup program and follow onscreen instructions. It is recommended to backup everything (Tools menu -> Backup), and then stop Automation Workshop service before you proceed.

Does febootimail work with Gmail


Our support team has been asked like a thousand times, does febootimail work with Gmail and what is command line syntax? What SMTP server should I use?

The answer is YES. Febootimail works with Gmail using automatic authentication, or alternatively you must explicitly specify SSL or TLS command line arguments/parameters.

So, what is the syntax? The recommended way is to use automatic authentication. Google is enforcing use of SSL for all of its services, so using AUTH AUTO will automatically enable TLS/SSL.

Here is an example:
febootimail -SERVER smtp.gmail.com -AUTH AUTO -USER YourEmail@gmail.com -PASS *********** -FROM YourEmail@gmail.com -TO email@example.com -SUBJ "Gmail test" -TEXT "Testing Gmail. It is easy and secure!"

All command line arguments/parameters used:
-SERVER smtp.gmail.com
-AUTH AUTO
-USER YourEmail@gmail.com
-PASS ***********
-FROM YourEmail@gmail.com
-TO email@example.com
-SUBJ "Gmail test"
-TEXT "Testing Gmail. It is easy and secure!"

Need help on parameters? Here is a help: All command line email parameters explained.

NOTE: you can only send emails using your Gmail’s email address in the FROM field. Other addresses will not work.

Some more examples, if you want to tweak your command line parameters:

NOTE 2: SSL by default uses port 465, TLS uses regular (default) SMTP port 25, but you can choose to use client (MUA) port 587. More info here: Google Gmail support.

Windows XP extended support ends in 700 days

Windows XP extended support ends in 700 days (a little more than 1,000,000 minutes). So most probably after Apr 8, 2014 Windows XP will be unsupported by our software products. May be some days before, or after, but this is inevitable – you (who are still on XP) will be forced to upgrade if you want to continue using latest releases of our software products.

Windows XP End of Support 700 days

What this “unsupported” mean for you as the end user? There are main two things that will happen after that date:

  1. We will not test our software against Windows XP. There are no guarantees that newer version will continue to work with Windows XP, however, Windows Server 2003 R2 support ends Jul 14, 2015, and because Windows Server 2003 is based on the same kernel and the same shell as Windows XP, it is very possible that you will be able to go with XP another year or little more.
  2. Second thing is, that we will eventually switch to newer Visual Studio version, which means, that you will not be able to (physically) run our software on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Each version of Visual Studio can target certain Windows versions, and I am sure, that Visual Studio that will be released after Jul 14, 2015, will not support these older Windows version.

Also, note that, it is not guaranteed that we will support these both OSes till the Microsoft Extended support ends. We will do a reasonable effort to support our users, but not the operating system that nobody is using.

Again, Windows XP Extended Support End Date – Apr 8, 2014. Source: Microsoft Support Lifecycle.
Windows Server 2003 Extended Support End Date – Jul 14, 2015. Source: Microsoft Support Lifecycle.

P.S. My personal recommendation is to upgrade to Windows 7 ASAP, or at least wait till Windows 8 comes out and upgrade then!

P.S.S. There is a simple Desktop widget from Microsoft for Windows that shows how many days left till Windows XP support ends. See the screenshot above. Here is a download link: Windows XP End Of Support Countdown Gadget.

Febooti Command line email v4.1 is available now

Febooti Command line email v4.1 is available now. Among updated OpenSSL libraries, we have made improvement related to iOS. One of our users have reported that iPhone uses CID image caching using CID from HTML email provided from email client. Checking relevant RFCs indeed confirmed, that image CIDs must be globally unique (unique in email itself is not enough). We switched to GUID, so chance of collision is almost impossible, even if all 7,000,000,000 of world population would send emails using our Command line email tool simultaneously.

Note to developers and users who use .eml files: If you develop similar software — that sends emails that can land in the iOS/iPhone inbox, then extra care should be taken, because if possible attacker can guess your next image CIDs, she/he can take advantage of that fact and poison iOS email client cache with some SPAM images that will appear in your sent HTML email message.

Download latest version: 32-bit / 64-bit
Read history: change log
More information: Command line email

Folders can not have a dot at the end

Automation Workshop have a small UI glitch. When you try to rename folder by appending one or more dots “.” at the end of the folder name, nothing happens. Dots just disappear. This behavior is caused because of the way Windows handles file/folder renames, and Automation Workshop uses OS File System folders behind the scenes.

Automation Workshop New folder

What does this mean for you as a user. You can not have folder with “.” at the end. For explanation and more info, and a similar bug in Windows Shell read here: Disappearing folder – bug in Windows 7.

Most probably this will be fixed in next Automation Workshop version.

We have just released Automation Workshop v1.2

After more than 1/2 year of development, we have released Automation Workshop v1.2 (see list of changes). The most exciting new feature is Automatic backup.

We implemented automatic backup using our own Automation Workshop actions, namely, Zip files Action, Export registry Action, and a couple other. This means that Automatic backup is acting like regular Automation Workshop task — it writes in Service log file (success and failures), it can be easily extended or changed, users can even implement they own backup tasks easily.

Also, it is interesting to note that our internal automated test cases have just passed more than 1500 items. We are using a special kind of test driven development. Of course if we split all test cases into smaller peaces, there will be far more than 15,000 items, but in our metrics it is more that 1500, and each of the test case has taken [on average] more than 1 hour to build. So it is approaching a one year of full time work (WYE).

And one more thing, in 753 days Extended support for Windows XP will end. For our users this means, that after this date we will stop releasing fixes for Automation Workshop on Windows XP. Windows Server 2003 support will end about year later. Both Windows XP and Server 2003 are based on the same codebase, so most probably Automation Workshop will run on Windows XP a year after Extended support ends.

Febooti Software products tested on Windows 8 Developer Preview

When Microsoft releases a new version of Windows, everyone expects that all his/her software continue to work. Microsoft spends plenty of resources to ensure that upgrade to newer OS does not break anything.

We at Febooti Software also are paying much attentions to compatibility. A couple days ago Microsoft released the Windows 8 Developer Preview version with a new Metro interface. It is nothing near the final version and many things will change along the road of Windows 8 (Beta 1, Beta 2, Release candidate 1, RC2, etc.).

Currently all of or software are compatible with upcoming Windows 8 64-bit and 32-bit versions. Our discontinued software product – Febooti ieZoom toolbar is compatible with Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10.

Below are some screenshots where our programs are running under Windows 8.