Statement on Malicious Code

By: Dorian J. Burnette, 8 May 2012

I have received reports from users that upon downloading a program from djburnette.com, the software was flagged as malicious. This has been reported with Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and some software by Symantec. Unfortunately, the amount of malicious software is on the rise, and software companies are implementing ways to guard against infection. Alas, the latest implementations are worse than the problem itself--so draconian that false alarms are common. The main reason for software from djburnette.com to be flagged seems to be due to the fact that the programs available here are not commonly used. Well duh! The software offered here is quite specialized, so a large quantity of downloads is very unlikely.

What seriously infuriates me is that these companies have given no information about how flags for more specialized programs can be removed. Some folks have had luck placing their executable setup files into a .zip file. However, that is an extra step for the end user to deal with, and completely defeats the purpose of having separate user-friendly setup routines for my programs. Other folks have suggested a digital code signature may help. Digital signatures for sure have promise, and I wish I could implement those in my software immediately. However, various companies charge a fee on a yearly basis that is so out of line for the free/open source software developer that it does not deserve any further comment other than "unacceptable!"

It is very unfortunate that such a blunt statement needs to be posted, but this lame "guilty until proven innocent" approach is insulting to the folks like me who write more specialized programs. It also forces us to make our own lame statements like this due to the high number of false alarms.

Bottom line...unless this website is hacked, software available for download here WILL NOT contain malicious code.