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In the past I've seen where Norton antivirus will block a legitimate program from running on Windows 7. I'm under the impression that in order to prevent antivirus programs e.g. Norton from preventing the installation or running of a program, I'll need to have the program codesigned thus marked by Windows as a benign program. What is the process for performing that codesigning in various contexts such as:

  • How do I codesign a regular C++ program that I developed using Visual studio?
  • Just curious, how do I codesign a program that I created using GCC e.g. using Cygwin?

Thanks.

user3430550
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  • Code signing is not the only solution here. You can make unsigned programs not get triggered by AV. Perhaps it's something your program is doing... – Joe Mar 17 '14 at 20:30

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You cannot sign your program in such a way that anti-virus progams will ignore it. If you could do that then virus writers would sign their programs. Signing your code will not change the way an anti virus program views it.

Anti virus programs will always produce false positives. That's a fact of life. If you are victim to that you'll need to go through the standard procedures of contacting the anti virus author and requesting that they make an exception for your program.

You can also sometimes try to work out what aspect of your program is making the AV program finger it, and change that. For instance, executable packers are notorious for triggering AV detection.

David Heffernan
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  • Hi. Is there a way to have Windows recognize my program as trusted? By way of analogy, on OS/X some apps are deemed trusted and can be run immediately after download, whereas others require the computer's owner to say that they intended to run the program. – user3430550 Mar 20 '14 at 00:12
  • Anti Virus is separate from Windows. What exactly do you mean by "trusted"? – David Heffernan Mar 20 '14 at 07:03