OneCare labels Gmail a virus

Rival webmail system flagged infected by Microsoft AV.

A number of users of

Microsoft

‘s anti-virus product

Windows Live OneCare

have reported being warned of a virus infection when trying to check their email on

Google

‘s

Gmail

webmail service. The warnings seem to coincide with installation of the recently released, updated web browser

Internet Explorer 7

.

Numerous posts on both

OneCare

and

Gmail

forums have reported sightings of the warning over the weekend, which appears to occur only after upgrading to the new web browser. The infection is labelled ‘Bat/BWG.A’, but little further information is available from either

Google

or

Microsoft

regarding the cause of the issue. One

Gmail

user was apparently instructed to delete all his archived mail by a

OneCare

support technician, while others have been advised to clear their web caches, to little effect. Many have suggested a false positive from the

Microsoft

product, while others have assumed the detection is an attempt to block access to rival services.

Some forum postings can be viewed at

Microsoft

‘s


OneCare

help centre

or at the


Gmail

problem forum

. Very little information on the Bat/BWG.A virus is available at

Microsoft

‘s threat centre,

here

, although a similarly named email worm is described by

Trend Micro

,

here

.

Posted on 13 November 2006 by

Virus Bulletin