Example programs compiled in Visual C# 2010 Express quarantined by Norton Internet Security

Question

I am learning C# and using the book "Start Here! Learn Visual C# 2010".  The first  2 examples build "no additional code added" programs that load and display web pages - one using Windows Forms the other using WPF.  They run fine out of the IDE but trip Norton Internet Security 2012 ("Sonar") when I attempt to run them directly.  Sonar tells me that the suspicious activity is "Accessibility API usage".  Has anyone else run into this?  I have submitted a "false positive" report to Norton.  I placed the debug and release exe's for the Windows Forms version in Nortons exceptions list and I can then run it directly.

Answer 1

Sounds like Norton is monitoring for usage of the accessibility API which, in my opinion, is wrong.  All you can really do is either disable AV or wait for them to fix it.  You might also look in the AV options and see if there is an option to exclude directories from scanning.  If so then you can add the directory where you store your projects to the exclusion list so Norton won't even scan your programs.  I used to have to do this with McAfee.

Michael Taylor - 3/29/2012
http://msmvsp.com/blogs/p3net

Answer 2

Well Norton looked at the "problem" and tells me that they are going to update their detection methods to not give this false positive.  We'll see.