uTorrent Flagged As ‘Harmful’ by Anti-Virus Companies and Google

[NelsonG]

[img]http://torrentfreak.com/images/utorrent-logo-new.jpg[/img]With millions of new downloads per month uTorrent is without doubt the most used BitTorrent client around.

The software is the main source of revenue for the San Francisco based company BitTorrent Inc. and generates income through advertisements and bundled software.

The latter now appears to be causing trouble as several anti-virus vendors have begun listing uTorrent as a security risk. The scanning result below from VirusTotal shows that at least six anti-virus applications, including ESET and Symantec, have flagged the software as problematic.

The anti-virus scans associate the uTorrent.exe file with [i]Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT[/i] and the controversial [url="https://www.sophos.com/en-us/threat-center/threat-analyses/adware-and-puas/OpenCandy/detailed-analysis.aspx"][i]OpenCandy[/i][/url] bundling software. While this isn’t the first time that uTorrent has been flagged in this manner, we haven’t seen it being reported by this many independent tests before.

[b]uTorrent’s Virustotal results[/b]
</br>[url="http://torrentfreak.com/images/utorrentvirus.jpg"][img]http://torrentfreak.com/images/utorrentvirus.jpg[/img][/url]

In addition to action by the anti-virus companies, uTorrent is also being blocked by Google in several ways. When attempting to download the latest stable release of the torrent client, Chrome flags the software as malicious and [url="/images/utmal.jpg"]blocks the download[/url], although this only appears to happen sporadically.

Google is also actively [url="http://utclient.utorrent.com/offers/beta_release_notes/release_notes.html"]blocking[/url] several pages that link to uTorrent and other BitTorrent Inc. software. According [url="https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http%3A%2F%2Futclient.utorrent.com%2Foffers%2Fbeta_release_notes%2Frelease_notes.html&client=googlechrome&hl=en-US"]to Google[/url], parts of the uTorrent website contain “harmful programs.”

[b]uTorrent.com warning in Chrome[/b]
</br>[img]http://torrentfreak.com/images/utorrentharm.jpg[/img]

The same “harmful software” warning from Google [url="https://torrentfreak.com/chrome-blocks-major-torrent-sites-over-harmful-programs-150710/"]also prevented millions of people[/url] from accessing popular torrent sites earlier this month.

A Google spokesperson informed us that this was the result of the company’s increased efforts to block programs that make “unexpected changes” to people’s computers.

“Google Safe Browsing’s ability to detect deceptive software has steadily improved,” the company [url="http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.nl/2015/07/more-visible-protection-against.html"]explained[/url] in a recent blog post.

“In the coming weeks, these detection improvements will become more noticeable in Chrome: users will see more warnings about unwanted software than ever before,” Google adds.

These and the other uTorrent threat reports all seem to be triggered by bundled third-party software bundled. There is no indication or evidence that the BitTorrent client itself is harmful.

We asked BitTorrent Inc. for a comment on the recent reports but the company has yet to respond.

Source: [url="https://torrentfreak.com"]TorrentFreak[/url], for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, [url="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/"]torrent sites[/url] and the [url="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/"]best VPN services[/url].

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