I haven't used BOINC for a while and a few days ago decided to get active again. Earlier today I installed some software that was packaged with an anti-virus/malware program as well, "360 Total Security". I just noticed a WARNING has popped up on my monitor stating that 360 Total Security has detected a trojan, named HEUR/QVM10.1.Malware.Gen location is

C:\ProgramData\BOINC\projects\setiathome.berkeley.edu\setiathome_7.07_windows_intelx86_opencl_ati-sah.exe

Has anyone else reported this specific alleged Trojan at that location, or is it a false alarm, or should I consider it an actual threat? Can I delete that specific file without it affecting the program, or is it a required file?

I checked online for reviews of the 360 Total Security and it's received fairly good reviews from reputable websites including PCMag and Cnet are a couple of them.

That file, as it clearly states in the name, belongs to the SETI@Home project.

So, deleting it will not affect BOINC - the forum you are writing on here - but it would affect your ability to contribute to the SETI@Home project.

In general, you should ask project-specific questions on the forums of the specific project concerned. SETI has a Questions and answers section where new users can post without restriction.

But if you post there, you are likely to get the same sort of answer as you get here.

It is extremely likely to be a false alarm, but for your own peace of mind, you should check the file with a multi-vendor site like https://www.virustotal.com/. If, as is highly likely, this particular software is being over-senstive, you should tell them to white-list the particular file, and tell the review sites that it has caused you this anxiety and trouble for no purpose.

There's falls positive reports on a semi frequent basis, but false they've proven to all be... 100% [so far ;]. There's a recent thread on these forums that shows how you can do a 'second opinion', multi-scanner verification to confirm that it's false. E.g. at https://www.virustotal.com/

Some 'x-ware' include 'extras' in their software distribution to make you think you've got a virus/malware, to then get you to hit links to install their infections, so be extremely careful in accepting installs of anything unsolicited.

Edit: Need for speed :P

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Coelum Non Animum Mutant, Qui Trans Mare Currunt

Yes, I run Malwarebytes on this computer and just installed it on my older Netbook that I just powered back up and found bunch of PUP files from some file that hijacked my browser. The netbook I run primarily Lubuntu on, but wanted to check out a SDR (Software Defined Radio) program (Windows Program) on there for monitoring ELF and VLF Radio Signals. I had McAffee's on that computer, just deleted it and went with AVG which I've used in the past and always liked. This computer, which is the one I run the BOINC on, is currently only running the Microsoft Anti-Virus program and maybe it's time I switch back over to one of the other programs for a while.

By the way, when I uninstalled the 360 Security Program it wanted Feedback as to why I was uninstalling it. It had a list of about 10 reasons and the #1 item on that list for reasons of unistalling it was, "It reported legitimate programs as malicious" I have a feeling it's a known issue if it ranks that high up on their list of why people uninstall it.

For home use I run AVG Free

Which you may want to rethink because of their new non-privacy rules.

Besides, all those 'free' versions of the anti virus always lack something as you already said. So why not go for a really free anti virus, one that's open source? The cloud based ClamAV for instance?

I now run the Immunet3 client, it's fast, it doesn't take up my computer when I restart it or when I bring it out of hibernation. Before I had Microsoft's Windows Security Essentials, and although it started off fine it was irritating me lately that when I bring my computer out of hibernation, I can't use it for five to ten minutes because WSE is doing a scan and slowing everything down.

I don't put my computer in hibernation to then have to wait loads of minutes to be able to use it. I can then just as well power down completely.

Immunet3 did a full system scan last night, it used all 4 of my cores for that and scanned the complete 2.5TB if 3 hours and 5 minutes. Found 14 things it didn't trust and put them in quarantine, I checked them over and put three game launchers back. The rest was probably suspicious. And stuff that WSE, Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and SuperAntispyware missed.

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Interesting to see your views upon the Windows Hibernation or sleep Mode.

I don't use sleep mode, that's different.
Hibernate will write the contents of Windows and anything that's open to a file on your C: drive and then close the computer down.
Sleep will write the contents of Windows and anything that's open to memory (RAM) and then partially close down the computer, but keep power on the RAM. Lose the power here and you'll lose everything.

With hibernate you don't lose anything when you lose power. It's a file on disk. This last summer when I changed to another case, I used hibernate, switched motherboard and all hard drives to the other case, and powered back up from there. No problem.

When I have to start from cold, start up takes approx. 10 minutes, from BIOS to fully loaded, no HDD hits anymore.
When I start from hibernate, start up takes approx. 3 minutes.
I'm still using hard drives, with spinning discs, which account for some slowness at restart. Depends on where on the drive parts have been written to.
One of these days when SSDs are big enough, I may change over to one. 4TBs are now just available.

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