From TNPC issue #4.16...

Seeing Red Over AntiVirus False Positives

by Lee Hudspeth
August 9, 2001

I recently had a series of CodeRed Worm alerts on my production PC. But guess what, that's impossible!

Why impossible? Because this particular piece of malware cannot infect a PC unless it's running Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000, and my production PC runs Windows 98SE. This scenario is called a "false positive" in computer security circles. Think of it as a false alarm.

This term means that some mechanism or system has incorrectly identified some other mechanism or system (like a PC) as being in a given state when it isn't. An example we humans can all relate to is a disease diagnosis based on a blood test. There's a chance--sometimes small, sometimes not, depending on the test and the disease--that you will be told you're sick when you're not, at least not with that particular malady. False positives are a part of the empirical reality of our world, but I'm not going to cut Symantec or the anti-virus developers any slack. A mistake is a mistake, I paid my money for error-free detection/prevention of viruses, and they need to raise the bar.

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