Unisoft regularly runs its
installation software through our standard virus testing (see #4 below) to
ensure its safety.
Below is information explaining why you may receive a general installation
warning or a virus scan warning when installing the Unisoft software or
other software. Typically, this is not an issue for our
software, as
well as for many other software programs.
Unisoft has thousands of installations and over 40 years in business,
so you should be ok installing the Unisoft software.
Typically, the Unisoft software installs without any warning notices.
such as in
Microsoft Defender SmartScreen (see #1 below) or a virus scanner warning
message. These reasons are outlined below.
GENERAL INSTALLATION WARNINGS
A
general installation warning, such as in "Microsoft Defender SmartScreen" or
"Unknown Publisher" (see #1 below), is normal. This is usually because our
software serves a small niche electronics
market, so it may not have
been seen frequently.
VIRUS SCAN SOFTWARE WARNINGS
There are hundreds of virus scanning software companies, and almost any
software may be flagged with a false positive by one of them for various
reasons. Generally, when reviewing these types
of warnings, if only one
company reports a virus problem while the others do not, we would not be
overly concerned. It is likely a false positive since only one antivirus
detects it.
More information follows.
Please feel free to send Unisoft any virus type installation notices you
received (
A
good testing source, that Unisoft uses, for viruses is a company called
VirusTotal (
https://www.virustotal.com/ ), owned by Google.
From Wiki:
VirusTotal was acquired by Google in September 2012 and the company's
ownership switched in January 2018 to Chronicle.
Files up to 650 MB can be uploaded to the website, or sent via email (max.
32MB). Anti-virus software vendors can receive copies of files that were
flagged by other scans but
passed by their own engine, to help improve their software and, by
extension, VirusTotal's own capability. Users can also scan suspect URLs and
search through the
VirusTotal dataset.
So,
VirusTotal has 70+ various virus engines that it submits the file in
question too and if there is a problem you would normally see it here and
this is one of our virus checks.
Also the Unisoft software is tested with 5+ other individual virus
scan companies (see #4 below)
Below are reasons, explanations and testing for installation notices and
false virus scan warning notices.
1)
A
general installation warning such as in “Microsoft Defender SmartScreen” is
normal and is usually because our software services a small niche
electronics market so our software may not have been
seen that often.
Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is a security feature of Windows which is
designed to protect you from potentially dangerous websites and downloaded
files. This warning does not indicate the
SocketTools installer or
components contain malware.
SmartScreen uses a reputation-based system for determining if an application
can be trusted. If SmartScreen is enabled, you may encounter a warning that
indicates it is an unrecognized application.
Clicking the “More Info”
will display some additional information and allow you to install the
software package.
2)
You
can generally ignore warning messages such as “unknown publisher”
or “not enough history of installations” when installing the
Unisoft software and this is normally because your virus
scanning
software has only seen the Unisoft executable software scantily or not at
all in the past.
For
example generally if you're seeing some type of warning on installation it
maybe because your virus scanning software has few or no records of the
Unisoft executable software and it may
inform you of that fact. Since
Unisoft sells to the niche market of Electronic Manufacturing software and
we do not have millions of copies installed it is not that unusual and this
may be especially
true with other less popular virus scanning software.
In
the figure below for example an “Unknown Publisher” general installation
warning is displayed and you can click YES to install.
3)
Another reason for a false trigger of a warning message on installation.
Below is a brief write up from our software department where they explain
the possible reason that a virus scan software
checker may trigger a
warning notice that is false. This can happen for any software program you
may be installing. Normally you can ignore such installation notices.
A virus scanner scans
programs for the “signatures” of known viruses. If a signature is
detected in a file / program the virus scan software flags it.
A signature is a pattern of
bytes that occurs in every copy of the virus. It could be a string of
characters or bytes of computer code. A signature is identified by a
human(s) at a security
company and then made part of their virus scan
software checking program.
A problem with virus
scanning is that a virus signature can appear in an uninfected program,
purely by coincidence due to the millions and millions of bytes checked.
To avoid this problem,
the human who identifies the signature must
ensure that the signature is truly unique to the virus, which isn’t
necessarily easy.
So with the many virus programs on the market today
some may give false positives regardless of the software program being
installed.
Unisoft will usually try to notified of virus scanning company of a false
positive reported and some but not all of these companies are responsive.
For those non-responsive companies a false
trigger of a warning message
may continue beyond our control.
However sometimes even if
the virus scanning company is non-responsive the false virus warning may
simply go away over time. This can happen if the company scans newer
releases of the software
in question and the string of characters or
bytes of computer code that was causing the false trigger has now been
changed because the Unisoft software was recompiled in a newer version.
Nefarious Virus Companies –
A few virus scanning companies, as can be imagined, have nefarious
reputations for creating false positives. This forces the affected software
company to contact
them, at which point they demand a fee, even though
there is no real issue. Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do about
this. That’s why, if you scan the software using a tool such as
VirusTotal (
https://www.virustotal.com/ )
and, for example, 69 out of 70 virus scans show
the software is clean while one does not, that lone outlier may be one of
these questionable virus
scanning companies.
4)
On looking at virus issues our software department normally tries a
few approaches. In addition to VirusTotal, etc. another approach is to
try other single-file virus scanners and we run them normally
through
four such scanners:
So, you can be comforted by the fact that, in addition to the 70+
programs on VirusTotal that Unisoft uses to scan for clean files, 4 other
independent companies (some of which also use sets of other vendor’s
programs)
also are used to scan all files.
Further, locally all files on all computers internally
are scanned weekly with a Full scan of Windows Security “Virus & Threat
Protection”. In addition, Custom scans are performed immediately whenever
there are any files in question.
Additionally, on a regular basis, miscellaneous
cross-protection scans for viruses, malware, etc., are run on all computers
internally, such as:
Auslogics
Registry Cleaner
CCleaner
HitmanPro
Norton
Utilities
PrivaZer
Spybot-S&D
5)
In some cases the virus scanning software company may not really
have that much detail on the virus status of the software in question and
may utilize VirusTotal as a beta site for learning what
the status of
that software should be and this may be especially true in Machine Learning
(ML) type of virus scanning software.
Here's an example from our software department on a false positive
from Acronis (Static ML) on VirusTotal:
We
strongly suspect it is a false positive.
Please contact Unisoft directly
for more information.
