Delphi programs blocked by Kaspersky Antivirus. Need workarround.

Question

Hi. I have a piece of code that is trying to write to disk many files in one second. However, it fails wince I have installed Kaspersky Anrivirus 2011.

Stream:= TFileStream.Create(sName, fmCreate); 

The code totally worked with Kaspersky 2010 and also works with Kaspersky 2011 if I disable its scanners (it cannot be totally unloaded from memory - unless it is uninstalled). The code also works if (Kaspersky 2011 is running and) I write to disk slooooowly. So it obviously is not fast enough to handle my disk requests.

The error I get is EFCreateError ('Cannot create xxx file blablabla'). Error is random. Most of the files are written to disk. About 10% fail.

I have tried to get support but is impossible to find a real person at Kaspersky to speak with. Their so called 'support' is actually a FAQ data base. Of course it speaks about how to install the product and related stuff. There is nothing about programing-related issues. Any ideas?

PS: this has repercussions for the entire Delphi community! All our customers will fail to use Delphi software if they are using KIS 2011 as antivirus. For the moment I recommend to my users to disable their antivirus but I need a real solution.

It will be nice if a person with KIS 2011 can confirm the problem. Just create a tiny program that write 200 small files to disk using TFileStream.

UPDATE:

• The problem appears ONLY when the file does not exist and it is created (created as opposed to overwritten).
• Similar report: https://forums.embarcadero.com/thread.jspa?threadID=32751&tstart=15
• Similar report: http://forum.kaspersky.com/index.php?showtopic=120561
• A possible solution that popped in my mind is to detect if KIS is running and if it is, to put a delay after each writing to disk. Or at leat, let the user know there may be problems. Anybody knows how to detect if a service is running?
• I added a delay of 650ms (after each file creation) and the bug is still there). So is not about how fast you write to disk but about how many files you write.
• Just uninstalled KIS 2011. The problem does not appear anymore.
• Just reinstalled the good old KIS 2010. The bug is still there but it appear rarely (about every 300 files instead of about 30 as in KIS 2011).
• The problem was confirmed on a second computer.
• NEWS: The crash appears in TFileStream.Create however it may be caused by a function called earlier: TestWriteAccess. If I disable this function, the TFileStream.Create doesn't fail anymore. Well, this doesn't change things too much. No matter which line of code generates the error, the program still fails (randomly) to write files to disk while Kaspersky is running.
• Still waiting a response from a real person from Kaspersky...
• More automated responses received from Kaspersky support (I sent emails to support in several countries). All pointing to a FAQ database.
• I change my status from Kaspersky fan (and customer) to Kaspersky hater because I finally receive an answer from a real person from Kaspersky support: I quote "Is het waar of just loads of bollocks? Met vriendelijke groeten, Kaspersky Lab B.V. Papendorpseweg 77-79". Kaspersky may be indeed a pirate company. They don't want to answer the emails because they know their s****y product is too buggy to be fixed.

Steps to reproduce the bug:

1) Test if the user has write permissions to a file/folder (create a file and immediately delete it). 
2) Test if success/fail. 
3) If success, create the file (again) and write content to it. 

The combination create/delete/create will trigger KIS bug if repeated many times per second (~30 times for KIS2011, 300 times for KIS 2010).

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Delphi 7, Win 7 (32), KIS 2011

Answer 1

Don't use KIS! I have also too bad experience with this...mmm..'product'.

Answer 2

Not an answer to solve your problem, but you should inform Kaspersky, probably they don't know there is a virus signature associated with a Delphi library.

And if your program isn't too complex, you might want to try Lazarus/FPC. It's not as good as Delphi, but I've been using it for several years now, and have got good results in Windows/MacOS/Linux.

Answer 3

You need to instruct your users, i.e. Kaspersky's customers, that Kaspersky is interfering with the operation of your software, and that THEY should report it. Express your frustration that you, as a developer, don't have access to a real human being. This is the only way that the anti-malware companies will ever react - bad PR with their paying customers.

Answer 4

When you create file, any antivirus checks it. There is probably some kind of collision between your application and KAV. Have you tried to combine fmCreate with share modes. You can see in help for TFileStream.Create for available modes.

Answer 5

I have interesting suggestion! As you might know Kasperski is made in Russia. And me too. Russian site of kasperski has all the contacts. There is even email to report false positive alarms! So i can write there in Russian, they might be more responsive then. (this happens with russian companies that became international). If you like this idea leave me a comment, i will write my email.

I really hate false positive alarms of antiviruses.

Answer 6

i had similar problems with kaspersky 2011 when i was trying to add my prog to windows startup using d2010's new TFile.Copy() as well as raw api function:

 CopyFile(PChar('C:\chellenger.exe'), PChar('C:\Documents and Settings\Omair\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\chellenger.exe'), False);

my solution was to put my delphi app in vb.net app as a resource, the vb.net app extracted it and put it to startup without false positives . Mixing two languages for your problem might solve your problem too(1 possible solution but a very ugly and nonprofessional solution i admit)

Answer 7

If the problem is just with kapersky, then just have your program detect if it is running. If so, scale back your file creation / writes to whatever passes their detection. Make sure you have some little status message somewhere that tells the user why things are slow. Incidentally, virus writers already know this which is why those heuristics simply don't work.

After doing that, contact Kapersky and work with them directly to get this resolved.

This gets past your immediate issue and will give you and kapersky time to figure out a long term solution.

Alternatively, you could simply shut kapersky down.. Just make sure you grab all of their watch dogs in the process.. But that tends to be a little more combative.

Answer 8

Creating a huge amount of files sounds like something that isn't necessarily A Good Thing, but you probably have your reasons :)

When you get the error code in Delphi, does KAV pop up any heuristic warnings, or is it completely silent? It wouldn't be weird to get a heuristic "omg, that app is doing something bad!" from creating a ton of new file, but if KAV is silent I'd say it's a bug.

Can you post a delphi executable with the tiniest amount of code that reproduces the bug? And a version that does the same step but only creates one file, it might be interesting to trace with SysInternals' ProcMon.

Answer 9

Kaspersky = pirate company? Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe just yet another company with a bad product and nonexistent support. Their "support" consists in a FAQ database and an automatic email answering program. Phones are hooked to answering machines also. Their automated answer keep explaining me how to add my program in KIS "exception" database. I keep replying to those stupid emails that I cannot personally go to all my customers at home and put my program in the "exception" database and that it will be better if they will fix the bug.

When I finally got a non-automatic answer (the only one), the support guy fella is as rude as possible.

Possible solutions for Delphi programmers:
* Don't check if the user has write permission to a file (in order not to trigger Kaspersky bug)
* Check if the user has write permission. If the bug appears inform the user that Kaspersky creates problem and it should be temporary disable (while the program is running). Use a TRY EXCEPT block to do this.

Advice (based on my past experience):
Don't always blame your code if you ever received strange bug reports from your users when your program was trying to write to disk. Check also external factors (like existence of Kaspersky antivirus).

UPDATE:
I just applied for a refund. I will go for a chargeback if they won't refund the money (I strongly feel they won't).

Conclusion
When I posted this on StackOverflow I didn't realized the magnitude of the problem and I didn't realized it will deviate so much from initial course. Still I think it is well within the purpose of StackOverflow. We have all learned that sometimes the problems in out programs may not be caused by our faulty code and neither we can control the source of these problems (21 persons voted this question up - which means a lot of other people encountered issues with KIS). We can just hope that poor designed programs that interacts with user's system at a very low level (such as KIS antivirus program) will be soon fixed so our sales won't suffer (much).

It is just frustrating when your program is labeled "buggy" and you can't do much about it!

Answer 10

First, do you really need to test for write permissions by creating a file? Can't you just check the permission directly? I feel that creating a file for that purpose only is a lame way of doing it in any case.

Second, like noted above, it's likely that after you create and then delete a file, there is some intervention by Kaspersky's security mechanisms. Probably a driver tries to check the contents of the file you deleted, and keeps it alive for a while. Like this:

1. You create the file and open it, incrementing the refcount.
2. Kaspersky driver notices that and opens the file too. Even if you set share mode deny, as a driver it probably has the power to open it anyway (if Kaspersky could not circumvent sharing denials, any virus could have used the same trick to hide its data!).
3. You close the file and delete it. When you delete the file, the system just marks it "FILE_FLAG_DELETE_ON_CLOSE", but the file is still there until all the handles to it are closed.
4. Kaspersky continues to scan file, still haven't released the handle.
5. Therefore the file is still there.
6. You try to create a new file and the call fails because the old file is still not deleted.

The reason for all this mess is, of course, partly Kaspersky's checking mechanics, but they did nothing especially wrong here. Kaspersky needs to scan the file anyway, hardly anything can be done about that - it's antivirus, for crying out loud. On the other hand, checking permissions by creating and then deleting a file is (probably) very, very wrong. So I guess, you're the one at fault here.