How to Report Malware or False Positives to Multiple Antivirus Vendors

Submitting malware samples to all vendors helps protect nearly all Internet users.

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. 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.

In addition, please read the section about How You Can Help if you are knowledgeable about anti-malware vendors, or if you find something missing or incorrect in this list.

1. How To Easily Prepare To Submit The Samples

A. Make Sure an Email Client Is Set Up Properly

To follow the advice in this article, you will need to have an email client, such as Thunderbird or Outlook, set up and configured. If you have not already set this up, please do so now. For instructions on how to set up Outlook, please see this page; and for instructions on how to set up Thunderbird, please see this page.

You will also have to be using an email service which has been confirmed to work for this process. The only one that I am currently aware of is AOL.

By the way, I have confirmed that Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, GMX, and FastMail do not work.

In terms of the ones that do work, please note that sometimes they will force you to answer a puzzle to prove that you are human, or even to change your password. This is because it seems like what you’re doing constitutes unusual account activity. This is not really a problem. I’m just letting you know ahead of time so you’re not surprised.

B. Put Samples In Compressed Files

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. Once it’s installed, right click on the sample you would like to submit and select “7-Zip”. If you are submitting multiple samples, highlight all and 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 the samples.

After selecting “7-Zip”, choose “Add to archive…” from the context menu. It will open up a window. In the option for “Archive format”, make sure it is set to zip. Enter “infected” (without the quotes) as the password, then select OK. Now you should have the samples in a password protected zip 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 the zip file after the 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 (1)(A) 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 samples to all vendors below marked with a V . 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 if you like. Also, if you wish, you can submit the samples to the rest of the vendors who have submission information. Each of these vendors is marked with a A . However, this will be much more time consuming as you will have to manually submit the samples 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 vendors 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 Gizmo’s Best.

If I say that I have confirmed something in the list, it means that I have either been provided with that information directly from the vendor or from some other official source with connections to the vendor. The only way it can be incorrect is that 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 to attach the zip file and click Send. In any cases where the vendors require different steps, they are clearly noted.

V This symbol denotes the vendors who have been included in the mailing lists in Section 2 above.

A This symbol denotes the vendors who have alternate options for submitting samples, as they do not have an email address for submission.

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

* This symbol means that there is incomplete information. If you have any information, your assistance would be greatly appreciated.

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

The vendors are arranged alphabetically in this list. To jump to the vendor you’re interested in, please click on the initial letter of the vendor’s name below.

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.

5. How You Can Help

If you find that there is a vendor which I have left out of the list, please leave a comment about this so I can investigate. Also, if you find that any of the information I provide is incorrect, please let me know immediately so that I can fix this. This includes circumstances in which, I say I have confirmed that an option does not exist when it now does; information that does not work as promised; vendors that no longer support their product, etc. I will personally look into all information provided before adding it to the article. Starred products are those that I currently realize are in need of information. I could really use your help with those vendors as well.

That said, because of the strict requirements I have imposed for stating that I have confirmed that something does not exist, I will not be able to say that I have confirmed that submission options do not exist just because someone states it in the comments. I hope you understand that I am not insulting anyone but just being very cautious before adding information to the article. However, things like submission links or email addresses I can investigate myself and add. I only need an official response for confirming that something does not currently exist.

I really do need your help to maintain this article as this is way too much information for me to investigate on my own. Keeping this list up to date would require an astronomical amount of work, and I’m already very busy with many other projects. I thank you for whatever time you can contribute to make this the best malware submission article on the internet.