How to Report Malware or False Positives to Multiple Antivirus Vendors | Gizmo’s Freeware Archive

This article contains a list of every respectable Windows anti-malware vendor, with a signature based product, that I am aware of. Thus this list, in addition to showing you how to easily submit malware or false positives to all of them, also serves as a reference for anti-malware products which are confirmed to be legitimate. That said, I make no statement as to whether any particular anti-malware vendor is good at detecting malware. Some of the vendors in this list are very good and others are nearly worthless. This is not the place to discuss this. By submitting malware to all of them you can help protect nearly all internet users, regardless of which product they choose to use for protection.

Also, it would really help if you could rate this article. In addition, for those of you who are knowledgeable about anti-malware vendors, if you do find something wrong, whether it be a missing vendor, incorrect information, missing information, etc…, please read the section about How You Can Help. I really need everyone's help in order to improve and maintain this article.

Recent Changelog:

11/22/2014-Added XVirus to the list

11/24/2014-Removed online submission link for submitting false positives to Digital Defender as it was no longer working

11/30/2015-Added English submission links for Qihoo

Index

1. How To Easily Prepare To Submit The Samples

    A) Make Sure Email Client Is Set Up Properly

    B) Put Samples In Compressed Files

2. Easily Submit Malware To All Vendors

3. Criteria Used For The List

4. List Of All Vendors

5. How You Can Help

1. How To Easily Prepare To Submit The Samples

If you're planning on submitting a suspicious file, or multiple files, for analysis, the easiest way to do this is to install a program called 7-Zip. It can be downloaded from this page. Once it's installed right click on the sample you would like to submit and select “7-Zip”. If you are submitting multiple samples then highlight then all and then right click on them. Then choose “7-Zip”. Submitting multiple samples at once can save you a lot of time if you have a lot of samples to submit. However, I would suggest that you do not submit more than 5 at a time as some vendors will begin to reject these.

After selecting “7-Zip”, in the list that appears, select the option to “Add to archive…”.  It will open up a window as shown in the picture to the right. Then, in the options for “Archive format” make sure it is set to zip. Then enter in ‘infected' as the password. Do not include the quotes. Then select ok.

After this is done, in order to submit it to many of the remaining vendors, once again follow exactly the same steps only this time change the “Archive format” to 7z. Then put in the same password and select OK. Now you should have the samples by themselves, a password protected zip file, and a password protected 7z file.

2. Easily Submit Malware To All Vendors

One of the main purposes of this article is to make it as easy as possible for anyone who comes across malware to submit it to all security vendors in as few steps as possible. Also, don't worry about duplicate submissions. This has been taken care of for this list.

You can submit the password protected zip file by clicking on this link. (Attach zip file after email client opens and then click send)-Webmail users should right click on it and choose to save the email addresses. Then paste them in the contact line of your email.

You can submit the password protected 7z file by clicking on this link. (Attach 7z file after email client opens and then click send)-Webmail users should right click on it and choose to save the email addresses. Then paste them in the contact line of your email.

If the email is not delivered correctly please see my comments in section A1 to make sure that you are not using one of the email services which do not work with this list.

At this point you've submitted the sample to all vendors below marked with a . This does include most of them. Also, if a message failed to be delivered to one or more of the vendors, which does happen sometimes, you can manually submit it to them below if you like. Also, if you wish, you can submit the sample to the rest of the vendors who have submission information. Each of these vendors is marked with a . However, this will be much more time consuming as you will have to manually submit the sample to each vendor individually. Note that for online forms, unless instructed otherwise, you should upload the file directly and not in a compressed file.

3. Criteria Used For The List

My only criteria for adding vendors to this list are that they have to have their own website, which must provide contact information. Also, the vendor must have a signature based anti-malware product, not have a bad reputation, and their main site cannot be rated orange or red by Web Of Trust – which is a criterion imposed by techsupportalert and is non-negotiable.

If, in the list, I say that I have confirmed something, that means that I have either been provided that information directly from the vendor or from some other official source with connections to the vendor. I've already run across some occasions where, for example, the website indicates there is not a particular submission option, but their support tells me that there is. Thus, you can rest assured that if I say that something is confirmed to not exist, that information is trustworthy. The only way it can be incorrect is if the vendor now provides a particular submission option which they previously did not.

4. List Of All Vendors

Unless otherwise noted, when submitting a sample via an online form you should upload the file directly and not in a compressed file. Also, unless otherwise noted, submissions by email should be put in a password protected zip file. Just click on the link for the vendor you wish to submit it to and it will automatically fill the necessary details into your default email client. Then all you need to do is attach the zip file and click send. For any cases where the vendors require different steps they are clearly noted.

The symbol  denotes vendors who are included in the mailing lists in the previous section. You've already submitted the samples to them.

The symbol denotes vendors who do not have an email address for submission but do have some alternate options for submitting samples.

The symbol  denotes vendors who use the signatures of other vendors. Thus you don't need to submit samples to them directly.

If a vendor is unmarked this indicates that I currently have no information about how to submit malware to them.

An “*” means that there is incomplete information. If you have any information your assistance would be greatly appreciated.

To jump to the relevant section of the list please click on the letter that the vendor you're interested in begins with. The vendors are arranged alphabetically.

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Z

Please note that some products are known by multiple names. Thus, if you are having trouble finding a particular vendor, or product, it will likely be very helpful to search for them using ctrl-f.