Bitcoin Forum

Hey, I scanned computer with avast anti virus today and found a virus in C:\users\myname\AppData\Roaming\bitcoin\chainstate\701137.sst\

It says the gravitygrade is high and the status is "Threat: BV:Akuma-A"
Avast says it can't find the file when I try to delete it and I can't find it manually either

What is this and should I be worried?

No that's fine. The blockchain has random data in it that can trigger av.

i've never found it before when scanning

Now we know the source for the contamination  ;)

That should be fine.  

If you really want to have fun run combofix, that one also treats bitcoin-qt as a virus and deletes the entire directory, including the wallet.

what u talking about??

Akuma was the dark one in the Street Fighter series, sounds bad.  where did u get ur wallet?

... and irreversibly loose my Bitcoin. No thanks. I would stay well away from Microsoft Windows when it comes to Bitcoin. GNU/Linux is far safer.

There was a pastebin fairly recently that suggested exploiting the fact you can attach short amounts of data to the blockchain by spamming the network with transactions that contain signatures for random viruses. Thus being flagged by tons of AV software, and potentially causing a loss of coins.
http://pastebin.com/ct2WHUK5 (http://pastebin.com/ct2WHUK5)

The good news is that you can't really create a virus via the blockchain. Messages are limited in size (20 bytes? I think), and there's really no room to create an exploit since the format is so well-defined.

Yeah I heard that most OS can be compromised and that might have vunerlablilties, so yes Linux is safe for cold wallets

it's not a virus. i think so,too.

Is this info legit?

If so, sounds like fun.

I quit running antivirus years ago because of issues like exactly this. It causes more problems then it solves.

I run my web browsers either sandboxed or in a virtual machine. Run any suspicious software (like keygens) sandboxed or in a VM, and only download software that I'm relatively sure is safe.

I haven't used it before, but it sounds really bad if it delete the "virus" automatically.

I haven't tested it, because I don't run antivirus software (On Linux at the moment, usually running some flavor of Unix), and I don't feel like spinning up a VM.

Lots of AntiVirus's basically scan for known byte-patterns of malware, at least when doing a basic static scan. Smarter ones might check where the "signature" resides to try to determine if its actually malicious, others will flag it regardless of the signature position.

So, at least theoretically, it should work against a few AV's.

Hmm. how are messages attached to a transaction in the blockchain? And how are they stored?

And where would I get a list of known virus signatures?

Should send me your wallet, so I can make sure it is safe for you to use, lol.

Obviously joking, never send your wallet to anyone.

From the PasteBin post:


You're essentially creating a transaction with a fake recipient address which matches some virus signature. I'm not too sure where to get virus signatures that in use by AV products. I doubt they're publicly available (other than the EICAR test string (which Im not sure will fit here anyway) ). You'd probably have to do some reverse engineering to actually get them.

EDIT:I should mention that I have no idea whether such a transaction will actually get propagated and stored in the blockchain (invalid address), or if would simply be dropped/ignored, someone with more experience with the raw protocol would have to chime in. If you brute-forced an address that was a valid virus-signature and sent some bitcoin to that, then it should work regardless.

Although it can't actually cause loss of coins. It can only cause problems for local clients, and I think the pastebin over-states the effect.

My Win8.1 PC reported a virus detected in the Bitcoin database today. I just marked it as "Allowed" and then told it to ignore the Bitcoin directory there-after. If I'd picked the default action of "Quarantine" instead, I imagine I'd have been able to unquarantine it later, or else just download the block again. As it is, not only am I fine, but I can re-broadcast the block to anyone else who needs it. As long as one person has a copy, we're fine. The crypto means the block can't be forged. No coins are going to be lost.

does anyone use Avast and issue same problem?

This is probalby not a virus ... but we should check it.

What kind of Avast do you use?

Since people are beginning to mark the data folder as ignored in antivirus, I wonder how long it will be before real virii begin to reside there, infections from other attack vectors...

It's mostly just to fuck with people who are too stupid to configure their antivirus properly.