The fix update provided by BitDefender this afternoon (Saturday, March 20) restored all falsely quarantined files when I run an AntiVirus scan after downloading the update. Overall, the Trojan.FakeAlert.5 problem appears to be solved.
Before the fix arrived, I was puzzled by the error message "file not found" when I attempted to restore the quarantined files. After the update arrived, I decided to ignore the list of 2,386 infected files in quarantine and -- with some trepidation -- activated a new scan. The Deep System Scan required over 4 hours to scan about 1 million items and reported no infections.
The affected operating system is Vista on a 64-bit chip.
BitDefender's culpability in this episode, other than the false positives, was the failure to communicate at its one point of contact with customers, the bitdefender.com website. When a problem of this magnitude is running hot and active, an alert to customers should be prominently posted on the web's homepage, admitting the issue and updating customers about progress to resolve it.
Instead, concerned customers arriving at the website today found the usual sales pitch -- predatory capitalism hard at work as always. My visit to the Defense Center found no mention of the false positives issue, either, other than a big red bar reading 73.88 percent next to the Trojan.FakeAlert.5 "Virus name" listing.
Among the legion of Internet and personal computer security issues I've dealt with over the years, this one is unique in that it originated from within the antivirus software itself. The problem reveals a stunning lack of institutional oversight on the part of BitDefender's development teams. It also shows the absence of a crisis response strategy and corporate indifference to active customers.
I tend to agree with an earlier post that the false-positive problem is directly related to the software minefield separating 32x chips from their supposedly superior 64x relatives. In retrospect, I would have been better off sticking with the 32x processor because of the myriad software issues that have arisen in dealing with the “upgrade.”
As for BitDefender, that outfit has lost my goodwill and confidence, but so what? As another corporate niche player in the software game, BitDefender is currently “under new management” and far removed from its start-up skill set, which was honed in the wild east of viral Romania, but fell prey to success. The present principals and their hired help could care less about us customers.